


Tomb Raiders

by The Manwell (Manniness)



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: AU, Action/Adventure, Africa, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Archaeology, Egypt, Egyptology, England (Country), First Kiss, First Time, Japan, Laos, M/M, Mercenaries, New York, Nigeria, POV First Person, Romance, Sakhalin, Shounen-ai, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:39:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 244,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manniness/pseuds/The%20Manwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trowa Barton was an orphan raised by South African mercenaries. Duo Maxwell was the son of a British lord. Not only were these two teenage boys destined to fall in love, but they were destined to save the world. Tomb raider style. </p><p>AU 2x3x2 YAOI Duo/Trowa</p><p>Warnings: Alternate universe fic, language, shounen ai, yaoi (male/male sex), angst, character death, reference to torture</p><p>Promises: No non-consensual or underage sex!!  None of the pilots will die!!  Cross my heart...</p><p>Notes: Very, very loosely based on the movie “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and, just like in the movie, no actual tombs are raided in this story.  Heh.  (^_~)v</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hieroglyphs

**Author's Note:**

> Tomb Raiders will consist of several installments:
> 
> Hieroglyphs (Trowa POV)  
> Ruins, Part 1 (Duo POV), Part 2 (Trowa POV), & Part 3 (Duo POV)  
> Appearances, Parts 1~3 (Trowa POV)  
> Team Work, Parts 1~3 (Duo POV)  
> Prom Night, Parts 1~3 (Trowa POV)  
> The Quest, Parts 1~13 (Alternating POV)  
> Graduation Day, Parts 1 (Duo POV), Part 2 (Trowa POV -- WIP)   
> plus some kind of epilogue type deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trowa uses some South African terms and slang but they should make sense (generally) in context. A brief list with definitions can be found here - http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Theme music for Hieroglyphs: "The Tension and the Terror" by Straylight Run

 

The boy was just as surprised to see me here as I was to see him.  What were the odds that the archeological dig site my troupe had been hired to guard would be visited by someone who looked to be about _my_ age?

My hand tightened on the gun strap slung across my chest.  He blinked large, dark blue eyes at me, examining my dusty camo fatigues, the hunting knife in my belt, the steel water canteen dangling from my hip, and the binoculars around my neck.  Standard uniform for guarding sites from tomb raiders and grave robbers.

He wasn’t wearing any gear similar to what I was.  He was dressed in baggy, khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt with a pair of big, red lips that smiled at the world from the center of his chest.  I didn’t know what the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” was, but I was morbidly curious if this oke was going to give it a run for its money.  Probably not.  He slipped and skidded in the sand.  The canvas takkies he was wearing were no match for the constantly shifting dunes.  I wondered if the _boykie_ was prone to seasickness.

The wind picked up, swirling around us.  I waited for his judgment, but he only looked his fill, meeting my gaze with neither derision nor aggression.  Unsettling.

“Come along now, Dominic!”

The boy startled in response to the affectionate and authoritative summons, whirling around, and I saw his braid roll with the wind like a whip as he dived for the hastily-laid wooden boardwalk and jogged after the man who had ridden shotgun in the Land Rover: Lord Maxwell.  This was the first time I’d seen my employer.  We’d been guarding the site for two months now, ever since some university professor out of Cairo had discovered this tomb and we’d been contacted to provide round-the-clock security.  It did not surprise me that the man bankrolling this whole operation was clearly past middle age, distinguished and successful.  He walked tall and straight, with purpose and drive to match his neatly trimmed, grey hair.

The kid surprised me, though.  Graceful in the way dancers were graceful, with his long plait of thick, brown hair and wide, sparkling eyes.  As if the world was a great joke he couldn’t wait to share with everyone who happened to cross his path.

I sighed and turned away from the gaggle of archeologists and graduate students that were gathering around the pair as they headed deeper into the dig site.

Seeing someone around my age – someone who hadn’t looked _through_ me or dismissed me – should not have been all that interesting. How pathetic that it was the most noteworthy event of this entire job so far.

Nonetheless, I continued watching him even after he and Lord Maxwell had exchanged greetings with the head archeologist, Professor Merquise, so I knew exactly how many times he glanced over his shoulder and looked back at me.  And with each time, his smile grew wider and wider.

I braced myself for the inevitable meeting.

It didn’t come until nearly sunset.  I finished my rounds for the day and the captain gestured me toward the makeshift armory.  I collected a bottle of gun oil, a clean rag, and a tool kit and then I went to sit under one of the few emaciated trees.  We’d set up a rickety card table and a bench.  It wasn’t the best of arrangements and the sand of the desert would get everywhere no matter how careful you were, but it was better than trying to field strip a weapon on the dust-covered floor of our tents.

I popped in my earphones and queued some music.  Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and got started.  I was deep in the meditative process of polishing each piece of the dismantled weapon when something fell on me.

I rolled off the bench and came up on my knees, knife in one hand and the other reaching for the pistol I kept concealed under my vest.

“Whoa, damn!  Chill, man.”

I glared.  Somehow, the boy I’d seen earlier had scaled the tree without me sensing him and then had crawled out onto the lowest, thickest bough which stretched out above the card table.  He was sprawled there like a jaguar, grinning ruefully as he tugged his braid up and tossed it onto his back.  “The damn thing always gives me away,” he offered.

“You’re lucky I didn’t slice it off.”

“Eh.  It’s hair.  It’d grow back.”

He had a point.  I put the knife away and glared at him a bit more.

He laid his head down on his pillowed arms and grinned.  “Nice evening, huh?”

It had been until that python of his had dumped itself on my head.  I righted the bench and sat back down, determined to get back to work.

“Whatcha listening to?” he asked after a minute of silence.

“Chopin.”

“No way.”

I offered up the right earphone to him.  He wrapped his legs around the tree branch and reached down for it.  The cord was long enough that he only had to duck his head a bit below the limb to fit it into his ear.

For a moment, we just looked at each other, the earphones tethering us together.  “Well, damn.  It sure sounds like Chopin.”

As if Mr. Hot Lips T-shirt knew anything about classical music.  I turned away.

“Nocturne.  Opus nine, number two,” he surprised me by saying.  I looked up again and watched his eyelids drift shut as his mouth curved into a soft smile.  “My mom used to play this.”

“Why’d she quit?” I surprised myself by asking.  I didn’t care.  I wasn’t curious.

“She’s dead.”

I didn’t apologize for it.  It never made much sense to me that people apologized for mentioning bad stuff they’d had no way of knowing was bad in the first place.

“What’s your name?” he asked me suddenly.

“Trowa,” I answered.

“First or last?”

“First.”

“So, what’s the last?  Or do I gotta arm wrestle ya for it?”

I almost smiled.  “Tempting.”

“Trowa Tempting?”

I snorted once, rolling my eyes up at him at the doff joke.  “Trowa Barton.”

“I’m Duo.”  He stuck his hand down in my face for me to shake.  My fingers smelled of oil and gunmetal, but Duo had to know that they would; he’d been watching me clean the rifle.  I grasped his hand firmly, but didn’t let go right away.

“Duo.  First or last?”  Turnabout was fair play.

He grinned, not the least bit concerned that I might pull him off his perch.  “First.”

“And the last?”

“Maxwell.  Like you couldn’t guess.”  He winked.

As he’d arrived at the site with Lord Maxwell, clearly a guest and most likely his son, it was a pretty safe assumption to have made.  “I don’t like guessing.”  I took my hand back and returned my attention to the dismantled firearm on the folding table.

“Do you like guns?” he probed, examining the rifle I was cleaning.

“Not really.”

“But you use ‘em.”

“I have to.”

For a moment, he just watched me work.  “Often?” he asked quietly, with the kind of reverence I should have used to speak of his dead mother.

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

“Man, my dad would _kill_ me if I touched a gun.”

My hands paused as a kernel of an idea nestled into my brain and began to sprout.  I looked up at him and found the same forbidden thought twinkling in his dark eyes.  It was a look that could turn the world on its end.

“It’s not that hard,” I began, feeling my mouth twist into a small, unfamiliar grin.  “You could learn the basics in an hour or two.”

His answering smile was pure mischief.  “But who would I get to teach me?”

I shrugged a shoulder.  “I know a guy.”

I’d never had my breath stolen away by a smile before, let alone one offered by a gangly, long-haired, smart-mouthed and no-doubt-spoiled lord’s son.  “My dad’s goin’ into town with Professor Merquise tomorrow morning.  Business stuff.  I can probably get him to let me hang out here.”

I leaned back on the bench, fitting the gnarly tree trunk between my shoulder blades.  He tucked his chin down to keep me in his sights and his braid slithered over his shoulder again.  It was almost long enough to brush the gun parts on the table.  “Meet me behind the supply tent about an hour after he leaves.”

Duo grinned, upside down.  “Yes, sir.”

He removed the earpiece and I held out my hand so he could drop it into my palm.  I marveled at him as I put it back in my ear, surrounding myself with glissandos and chords.  He stretched out on the branch above me, squirming trustingly onto his back, putting his hands behind his head and staring up at the darkening sky through the twisted, anemic limbs.  His braid did not dangle down onto the table, but I wouldn’t have minded if it had.  He was a creature unlike any I’d ever met.  There did not seem to be a single territorial or vicious bone in his body.

I glanced up at him as I worked and shook my head.  He wasn’t a jaguar.  He was… something else.

Letting the music and the repetitive motions coax me into that place where time stops, I worked until the rifle was cleaned and reassembled upon the card table.  I took a deep breath and pulled the earphones free as I looked up.

I frowned at the bare branch above my head.  I hadn’t even sensed it when he’d climbed back down.  Turning around on the bench, I scanned the darkness.  He’d disappeared like a ghost.

The next time I saw him was behind the supplies tent, grinning triumphantly, his chin tucked down and eyes twinkling at me over a pair of dark sunglasses.  He lounged in the driver’s seat of one of the camp’s dusty Land Rovers, his fingers tapping against the wheel as if keeping time to the beat of some drum line only he could hear.  “The eagle has left the nest, Major Trowa, sir,” he informed me with an irreverent salute.

“If you’re going to spend the next two hours speaking in some doff code, I’ll just shoot you now and go play some cards.”  I had hours to kill before my night shift started.

He started up the engine.  “As if you’d get away with it,” he said.

I waited until he’d put the vehicle in first gear and was even rolling away from the supply tent before I swung myself into the passenger seat.

“I should be driving,” I said as the clutch caught smoothly.

“You should be telling me an amusing anecdote to pass the time.  How far are we going, anyway?”

“About ten clicks.”  That would be far enough to muffle the sound of gunshots as long as we got down in between the dunes.  My fingers stirred on the barrel of the unloaded rifle, drawing Duo’s gaze.

“What are you, like, sixteen or something?”

I shrugged.  I honestly didn’t know.  I was sixteen according to my passport.  “You?”

“Fifteen.”  He said it with an air of distraction, as if he had no reason to not tell the truth about anything.  I couldn’t understand him.  How could someone be this… open?  Duo’s voice burst across the wandering path my mind had begun to take: “I can’t believe your mom and dad let you do this for a living.”

“They don’t.”

“You left home?”

“The troupe is my home.  I’m one out.”  When a frown pinched his brows together in confusion, I elaborated, “I don’t have any parents.”

Duo’s hands tightened on the wheel.  His expression turned both fierce and sad.  I waited for the pity, the sympathy, the apologies.  I’d never been particularly bothered by any of it before on the very few occasions when anyone from the outside had actually asked.  What they didn’t understand was that life in a troupe, especially one that didn’t hire out for overland fighting, was better than living on the streets… and _that_ was even better than the orphanages.

The guys in the troupe knew this, so they never felt sorry for me.  Civilians didn’t think that way, though.  Whenever the subject came up, I’d just let it all slide over me like the desert wind.  Besides, even though the captain had never claimed to be my father, it was always his hand on my shoulder in a silent show of allegiance.  Still, pity from Duo would be…

I wondered if I had enough time to dismantle the rifle so I wouldn’t be tempted to slam the butt of it into his face.

“An aunt or uncle?” he pressed.

I shook my head and looked out across the dunes, counting the oases of scraggly brush in the distance.

“So… how’d you get into this line of work if it’s not, y’know, the family business?”

Ah, so that’s what he was scheming.  He was curious, just curious.  I shrugged again.  “It _is_ a family business.  A family of nobodies.”

“But that’s not true.  You’ve got a name.  That’s something.”

“Barton is the captain’s name, and the name of our troupe.  They call me Trowa because, when I was really little, back when they found me, I was obsessed with threes.”

“Your lucky number, huh?  Why not call you ‘Trio’, then?”

“My first language was French.  _Un, deux, trois…”_   Even as I heard myself offer the explanation, I frowned.  How had he gotten me to volunteer all that?  I wondered when it’d come back around to bite me on the arse.

“Trowa,” Duo summarized, nodding.  It wasn’t the first time he’d said my name, but it somehow sounded different now.  His gaze was focused on the horizon and there was a weight in his voice that pressed against my chest, making my pulse race and my fingertips tingle.  I wished I were behind the wheel so I’d have something to grip.  I reached for the window frame of the Land Rover.

“I’m a decent driver,” Duo assured me.

“Ever driven on sand dunes before?”

“Before right now?  Sure.  I have ten whole minutes’ worth of experience.”

I rolled my eyes.  He was probably going to end up rolling the 4x4, but I couldn’t bring myself to really care.  I was looking forward to a challenge.  The last time someone had made a doff mistake in our troupe had been many jobs ago and the mistake had been mine.  Although, if the Land Rover got rolled, I’d probably end up getting blamed for it.

I sighed.

“Bored already?”

“How come you don’t go by ‘Dominic’?” I asked instead, remembering the name his father had used the day before.  I didn’t actually give rocks about his life’s story, but it would even the score between us.

Duo grinned.  “Ah, yeah.  Well, it used to be a thing in our family.  My older brother was nicknamed ‘Solo’ ‘cuz he was one of those shut-the-fuck-up-bitches-I’ll-do-it-myself types whereas I was always trying to, y’know, grab a share of the glory.”

I looked at him until he elaborated.

Sheepishly, he did.  “Even if the glory was a broken window dripping with what was left of a gravel-filled mud pie.”

“So you got dubbed ‘Duo’.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your brother now?”

“With my mom.”

I didn’t ask how or when.  Instead, I nodded to the ridge of the sand dune ahead of us.  “Take this slope down into the valley.  There’s a road.”

“Copy that,” he answered and I was almost positive that I hadn’t imagined the giggle in his tone.

He navigated with understated ease.  When it looked like we wouldn’t be rolling the vehicle down the slope of the dune just now, I asked, “How come you don’t sound British?”

“’Cuz I didn’t grow up there.”  He shrugged.  “Mom was American.  We live there during the school year.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

He let out a blustery breath.  “Man, she woulda loved to see this place.”  Then he laughed and the claustrophobic moment fizzled into dust motes.  “But she woulda kicked my ass if she found out about this!”

Duo shook his head ruefully, as if remembering a time when she _had_ – quote – kicked his ass.  “You know how to fight?”

“I had an older brother who was convinced he was an only child.  What do you think?”

“I think you rely on stealth more than offense.”

He nodded.  “Right, well, if we don’t end up shooting each other, maybe we’ll see about that later.”

“Maybe.”

We didn’t end up shooting each other, which was a welcome non-event.  Although Duo claimed to have never handled a gun before, he was very careful with the rifle, always making sure that the muzzle was pointed down and away from us even when it wasn’t loaded.  When we got to the target portion of the lesson, he walked out with me to set up the scrap of old sail I’d brought along, helping me stretch it across the side of the dune and weigh the corners down.  I wondered if he had any idea how comforting it was to see the rifle hooked through his elbow as he walked beside me.  I would have been twitchy with a sense of doom if he’d stayed behind with the weapon while I’d come out here on my own to set up.

“You don’t trust people easily,” he observed as we made our way back in the direction we’d come.

“I’ve got no reason to.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining or anything.  I’m just sayin’.”

“Saying what, exactly?”

“Is your accent French?  It doesn’t sound right.”

“South African,” I answered automatically.

“Ah… yeah.  Now I can hear it.  Well, anyway, I know you’ve got that knife on you and there’s that handgun tucked into the back of your pants—”

I blinked.  How had he known about my concealed gun?  It was well-hidden under my flak jacket.

“—so I get that you’re cautious and, hell, you have every right to be because, shit, you don’t know me, but, thanks.”

“Thanks?” I parroted, starting to feel a bit dazed from all the conversational vector shifts.  His interrogation technique was masterful and I admired him for it.

“For, uh, going out on a limb?”  He grinned.

I smirked.  _“You_ did that.”

“Oh, _right…”_

Impulsively, I leaned in and bumped his elbow with mine.  He laughed.

“Stop.  This is far enough,” I told him and gestured to the tatty, blue sail in the distance.  “Try and hit that with something stronger than a glare.”

He took extreme care as he loaded the rifle and removed the safety.  I stared at him as he raised the gun to his shoulder and posed himself as I’d lectured earlier, his feet shoulder-width apart.  I just couldn’t figure him out.  He was the son of a wealthy and distinguished British lord, likely had more pozzies than he had a use for scattered all over the planet.  He should have been a self-absorbed brat.  He should _not_ be so trusting, so careful of others, so…

_CRACK!_

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw sand dust spray up in a tiny puff to the right of the target.

Duo put the gun down, took a centering breath, and then, with a glare aimed at the sail, he lifted the rifle for a second shot.  He missed again.

“Stop trying to force it,” I told him.  “Guns are like people.  Handle with care.”

He glanced at me and blinked.

“What?”

Duo gave me a rueful grin.  _“You’re_ telling _me_ that people need to be handled with care.”

“It’s not as ironic as it seems,” I argued.  “When you have someone’s life in your hands, that demands more care, not less.”

The grin melted away.  He looked at me for a long moment.  The wind dipped down into this little valley and toyed with the loose strands of his hair, lifting my bangs away from my face.  Our gazes met, two eyes to two eyes.

“You’re right,” he agreed, expression somber and tone rough.

I fisted my hands as a shiver fluttered against the base of my spine where the handgun pressed against my waist.

He lifted the rifle for a third time and a look – a very serious look – came over his face.  His forefinger curled around the trigger.  His lips moved in silence although I couldn’t read the words.  And then—

_CRACK!_

“Nice shot,” I congratulated him flatly.  I’d have to move in closer to check, but it looked like the bullet had hit only about ten centimeters off dead-center.

He smiled, but I could see that it wasn’t a happy one.  Not really.  It was proud, but also sad.  I knew the feeling.  Knowing you’d just protected yourself and your troupe, knowing that their trust in you had been justified was an accomplishment.  Knowing that you might have just killed someone, knowing you had definitely hurt them… that was less so.

“Try again,” I told him.

By the time we headed back, he was a decent shot.  He’d refused to waste more than twenty bullets: “Hey, somebody’s life might depend on how much ammo you have.”  And he’d insisted on driving: “It’ll be less incriminating if anyone objects to our field trip.”

I had to agree.  If the captain found out this was all my idea, I was going to be stuck on cook duty for a solid month.  As it was, he’d be displeased, but I could probably sell him a line about making sure some hot-headed, rich _boykie_ hadn’t gone off on his own and gotten himself lost or worse.  Duo wasn’t hot-headed or a typical, upper-class teenage male, but the captain wouldn’t know that.

“Whatever,” I agreed, secretly pleased by his offer.

“I’m no expert on South African English,” Duo said suddenly, “but you use a lotta American-isms.”

“Bryce and Martins are Americans.  They talk a lot.”

“And give ya a hard time, right?  Kinda like uncles?”

How had he guessed?  “Ja.  Something like that.”

“You’ve got yourself a big family,” Duo murmured.  “Always wondered what that’d be like.”

I looked over at him and something in me – something devilish and alien – made me say, “Too much klank and not enough sharp razors to go around.”

“Klank?”

I lifted the elbow closest to him and affected a shudder as I mimed taking a whiff of my own underarm.

He blinked and then he threw back his head and guffawed.  I grinned along with him, the expression stretching my face oddly, but it wasn’t enough of a reason to stop.  He glanced at me and something flickered in his eyes as his gaze snagged on my smile.

My fingers _and_ my wrists tingled.

He turned back to the sand dune the Land Rover was crawling along.  “Man, some guys’ve got it all.”

My smile faded.  “If I had it all, I wouldn’t have to work for a living.”

He didn’t take offense.  “Technically, nobody does, not if you’re willing to accept a seriously shitty standard of living.  But, that’s not what work’s about, anyway.  It’s about finding purpose.  You think I’ve got it all because my dad’s rich?”  He shook his head but he wasn’t bitter.  “That’s just stuff.  Sometimes it makes life more comfortable but, mostly, it’s just a pain in the ass.”

I clenched my jaw shut to keep myself from gaping at him.  Who the hell was this oke?  Fifteen-year-olds from privileged society didn’t talk like this.  Not that I’d met my share, but…

Duo glanced over at me and shrugged a shoulder.  “We traveled a lot when I was growing up.”  He said it as if that explained his divergence from the norm.

“And?”

“And… some things just don’t change from place to place.  I’m just sayin’ – even if you’d been born into a family like mine, you’d still have to figure out who the hell you are, or wanna be.  Or whatever.”

“Whatever?” I echoed, a tickle of humor nudging at my lips.

Duo snorted.  “Hah.  Yeah.  Whatever, man.  Whatever.”

We arrived back at the dig site before Lord Maxwell returned and, as I still had a couple of hours to kill before my patrol started, I let Duo wheedle one of the grad students – a woman named Lucrezia Noin – into letting us go down into the newly discovered tombs for a look around.  Supervised, of course.

“Afraid we’re gonna steal some priceless treasure or something?” Duo teased her as we followed her through the stone-lined passageway.  He bumped my shoulder playfully and I felt myself relax.  I was so used to the distance and distrust from civilians that I hadn’t noticed the tension in me until Duo had shared the joke-that-wasn’t.

“I’m afraid this tomb was raided ages ago,” she told us.  “Probably weeks after the deceased was laid to rest.”

“So how come you’re digging?  I mean, if you don’t expect to find anything…?”

She paused and held her torch up, shining the beam onto the wall and revealing faded paint.  Images and hieroglyphics covered every inch of the tunnel walls.  “I didn’t say we wouldn’t find _anything_ or that it wouldn’t be valuable.”

“Oh, _sweet!”_ Duo said, turning to move the beam of his own torch up off the sand-covered floor and illuminate the walls.  I watched his eyes move up and then down, from left to right, his mouth moving again in silence.  Amazingly, he was _reading_ what was written there.

I’d never been jealous of anyone in my life.  Well, not in my memory.  But I was instantly _burning_ with envy.  I wanted to do what he could do.  I wanted that knowledge, that power, that connection to the world which had been laid at my feet.  I was right here, on the cusp of something mysterious and rare, and yet all I could do was gape at it like some kind of dorpie chop.

“This is the tomb of the cousin of King, er… hold up.  I can’t pronounce this name.”

He pointed to the characters which had brought him up short and Lucrezia leaned over.  She said it aloud for our benefit, but I couldn’t have told you what it was.  I was busy staring at Duo.  Wanting.  I was busy watching him for a flirtatious smile or a sly glance at the beautiful woman who was almost leaning against him as she answered his question.

He turned to me instead.  “Hey, if you want, I could show you what some of these mean later.”  He gestured to the painted characters.  “I’m not an expert or anything, but…”

“Sure,” I answered, willing Lucrezia to back off.

She did.  “Next stop, the burial chamber.  Watch your heads.”

I shadowed Duo as we moved deeper into the darkness of the tomb, pausing with him whenever he’d stop to point out some collection of hieroglyphs that he thought he knew.  Had Lucrezia done so, it would have seemed condescending and superior in the way that these experts with their larny university degrees often were, but Duo acted like he was simply reading a book summary out loud.

I decided that Duo would make a good teacher, so when he plopped down next to me at lunch (which was actually my breakfast) the next day, I didn’t waste time getting him started.  Lord Maxwell was only staying for a few days in total and, when he left, Duo would be going with him.

“What does that owl character mean?  And the eye one?” I said by way of greeting as I worked my way through my coffee, fried bread, and beans.

“Oh, man,” he began, going from zero to enthused in about half a second.  “The ancient Egyptians had the coolest alphabet ever.  Here—”  He pulled out a small, digital tablet from his pocket – he was wearing black denims today with a white T-shirt that had an illustration of a pink monster of some sort named “Mr. Bubbles” on it – and started poking at the touch screen with a plastic, pencil-shaped tool.

We sat there, warming the bench in the mess hall tent for the better part of an hour as he translated whatever I wanted to know, insofar as he could.  “I’m not an expert at this stuff!” he kept saying until I replied, smirking, “But you will be, someday.”

He looked bashful in response to that.  “Yeah.  Someday.”

“C’mon,” I said, dumping out my coffee grounds and rinsing my cup out at the pump station.

“Where’re we going?”

I grinned.  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled so much in the span of three days’ time, but the gesture was starting to become more familiar.  This time, I guessed my smile looked a little evil because Duo actually sucked in a breath and blinked at me.  “Out,” I replied.

“Uh… what for?”

“It’s my turn to teach _you_ something.”  I crooked a finger and watched him gulp.

Absolutely.

But he followed me out to a patch of vacant ground behind the supply tent where I invited him to throw a punch at me.

He laughed in my face.  “Yeah, and the next thing I know, I’m eatin’ dirt donuts for dessert.”

“I’ll be gentle.”

He just laughed harder.  “Dude.  Two words: lethal force.  Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

“If you’d been born yesterday, I wouldn’t be bothering to show you how to defend yourself.”

“Hm, yeah.”

I folded my arms across my chest.  “If it’s not on, just say so.”

“Oh, I’m interested, all right,” he answered with gratifying certainty, “but I ain’t suicidal.”  He glanced at the knife on my belt.  “That and the gun in the shoulder holster under your jacket have gotta go.”

I stared at him for a minute.  How did he know I’d moved the handgun from the waistband of my pants to under my left arm today?  But then I shrugged.  “Fine.”  I disarmed myself, laying both items on the running board of a nearby Land Rover.

“And, just for the record,” he continued when I turned back around, “I’m lettin’ you keep the piece in your boot.”

I squinted at him and speculated, “Been around mercenaries much before?”

“Once or twice.  Only, they’re called ‘security goons’ where I come from.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”  I squared off with him.  “Now, throw a punch.”

“Slo-mo?”

That might be for the best.  An _actual_ punch would likely trigger reflexes in me that would have him savoring that dirt donut he’d mentioned earlier.  I nodded.

“Ooo-kay…”  He made a fist with his right hand and drew it back.  “Shit, I can’t believe I’m gonna do this.  This has gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he informed me, fist still poised in the air.

I rolled my eyes.  “Slo-mo, Duo.  I’m just going to show you what to do.”

So he “punched” me in such painfully exaggerated slow motion that I almost laughed.  But I kept my word.  When I reached out to grab his wrist, I didn’t grip him hard.  The feel of his skin beneath my fingers was unanticipated, though.  Normally, I’d be moving so quickly that the heat and tender flesh on my assailant’s inner arm wouldn’t even register.  But I felt it all now.  With almost frightening intensity.

I cleared my throat.  “Easiest move,” I began, “is to sidestep and then shove your opponent down.  Use his momentum against him and push him to the ground.”  I tugged relentlessly on his arm, forcing him to stumble forward a step and bend his knees so I could place a hand on his shoulder blade.  He kept his eyes on mine, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to shove him into the sand.

I stepped back and released him.  “Now you try.”

I fisted my left hand and aimed a slow punch at the center of his chest.  We worked on that until I was throwing actual punches at him, both left and right, and he was actually pulling-pushing me to my knees.  When I decided he’d gotten the hang of it, I attacked one last time, let him yank and jerk me to the sand, and then, quick as lightning, I twisted toward him and drew the short, utility knife from my boot before leaping to my feet.  I loomed in front of him and fisted his T-shirt in my hand, drawing him onto his toes and angling my knife toward his neck like I was intending to stab him in the throat.

“Don’t panic,” I coached him in a soft tone just as his eyes went wide and blank with mindless shock.  “Grab my wrist with your left hand…  Good.  Now take a step back.  See how you’ve got me off balance?  Now pull my knife arm down and around behind my back—”

“Like this?”

I grunted as he swung me about.  “Ja.  Now use your right foot and step in front of my left…”  I waited until he completed the maneuver.  “Right, next, push me to the left so I trip over your foot as you drag me down.”

He did.  I taught him how to hold an opponent pinned to the ground, how to safely force him to release the weapon, and then we practiced.  And practiced.  And practiced some more.

Until, finally, I just stayed down and slowly rolled over, trying not to grin.

“Oh, shit, Tro.  Lookit you.”  He squatted over me and grinned so maniacally it was a wonder he could speak at all.  “This is Earth.  Greetings, mysterious traveler from the far distant Planet of the Dust Bunnies.”

“Bunny?” I coughed, sitting up and twirling the utility knife between my fingers.

“Er, a saber-toothed bunny.”

With a snort, I slid the knife back into my boot and grasped the hand Duo held out to me.  I let him drag me to my feet.  Then I leaned forward and shook my sandy hair at him.  He sputtered and coughed, staggering back a few paces and waving his arms to disperse the cloud.  I laughed.

“You’ve been hanging around the toppie’s lightie,” the captain said to me as I reported for duty, still thoroughly camouflaged in sand dust.

“Ja.”  There was no point in denying it.

He smiled at me, his snarly beard twitching upward on his ruddy cheeks.  “It’s been tops to hear you laugh, Trowa.”

I waited to be sent off to work.

“Can’t remember the last time you did, to tell you the truth.”

I couldn’t, either.

“Don’t let ‘im break your heart.”

I blinked.

The captain slapped me on the shoulder.  “West perimeter tonight, Trowa.”

I nodded and headed for my post.  On the perimeter, I had to pause and take a deep breath to clear out the captain’s words from my head.  I wasn’t…  Duo wasn’t…  Besides, I didn’t have a heart.

The blood churning in my veins settled.  My thoughts stilled.  My expression smoothed.  I focused on the job.

 After two night shifts in a row, I was rotated to afternoons and evenings, so I lost a whole day getting acclimated to my new schedule.  I wanted to strangle someone.  Ferociously.  With a kak-covered shoelace.

“Been keepin’ outta trouble?” Duo asked me when I stopped by the mess hall tent on my way back from walking the southern boundary line.  It was long past dinner time; he and I were the only ones here. 

“Ja,” I answered, sliding into the seat opposite his without waiting for an invitation.  “It sucks.”

He gave me a crooked grin.  “Yeah.”

I took note of the somber, charcoal grey, long-sleeved knit shirt he was wearing in deference to the cool desert night.  There were no illustrations.  No red lips or pink monsters.  Compared to those, this looked like something he’d wear to a funeral.

I looked down at the papers and reference books spread out over the long, folding table.  He’d been working on something.  Studying or translating.  I wasn’t sure which.  I reached for a hand-written page and read the first line.  It was a report on the discoveries Merquise’s team had made here.

“Careful with that,” Duo warned me, smiling.  “It’s my one and only chance to get my history teacher to ignore the fact that I never got around to writing my paper on British colonies in the Americas during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.”

I set it down with exaggerated care.  “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.”

Silence curled around us and tightened its coils.  _Are you pulling out tomorrow?_ I didn’t ask.  I didn’t _want_ to ask.  My throat closed in until it hurt to breathe.  I ate my way through my late dinner gingerly and Duo nit-picked at his report with such care you’d think we were both navigating a minefield.  My gaze caught Duo’s again and again in edgy non-speak as he seemed to wage some internal debate.

Finally, he took a deep breath and fisted his hands with determination.  “Hey,” he said, reaching for and shuffling the pages of his report together before sliding them into the largest reference book on the table.  He stood up and announced, “Grab a flashlight.  I’ve got somethin’ to show you.”

I did as asked, ducking into the armory tent and then meeting him in the center of the moonlit dig site.  In the darkness, I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I watched as he lifted a hand to his mouth, pressed a shadowed finger to his lips, and shushed me.

“Hand,” he requested on a breath and I offered him my left.  His fingers banded hotly around my wrist and I followed him as silently as I was able as he threaded our way past tents and sail-covered excavation pits.  For a minute, I was sure he was leading us back to the burial chamber we’d visited with Lucrezia a few days ago, but he turned sharply before we entered that tomb and climbed down a set of earthen steps, ducking into a far narrower tunnel.  He had to let me go, but he turned on his torch before scuttling down the crawlspace.

“Another tomb?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he rasped in reply.  “Not for a cousin of a king or anything, but yeah, it is.”

There were no inscriptions on these walls and I wondered what could possibly be worth the effort of wiggling through the tunnel.  I got the answer to my question when Duo pulled himself into the chamber beyond and reached a hand back to help me.

He pointed his light up at the ceiling and I could see his ecstatic expression in the glow.  “Are you ready for this?”

Before I could answer, he shined his light around the room and, after a gob smacked moment, my torch beam joined in.  This was no royal burial chamber, but the interred must have been a noble of some sort.  Or perhaps a very wealthy merchant.  I gazed at the painted pots, the carved statues, the scrolls and other items that awaited their lord’s use in the afterlife.

“Where’s the sarcophagus?” I whispered and Duo motioned to a neatly disguised archway which had been bricked over and painted with elaborate designs and hieroglyphs.

“Through there.  They’re still cataloguing everything from this room.  So it’s gonna take time.”

I nodded, playing the beam over the room again, this time pausing to study the details, the writing, the craftsmanship that had gone into the chamber.

“We should go,” Duo said a little sadly.  “There aren’t any air vents cut into the walls.”

I sighed.  “Thank you, Duo.  For this.”

He reached for my hand in the darkness and squeezed it.  I listened as he squirmed his way back into the tunnel and then I followed after him.  When we made it back to the sail-covered stairwell that the excavators had cut into the clay, he put a hand on my arm to keep me from heading above ground.

I sat on one of the ledges and Duo propped his torch on a step, shining the light away from the pit opening.  He dug something out of his denims pocket, closing his fist around it and concealing it from view completely.

“Here,” he whispered, thrusting his hand out to me.  My acceptance of it was automatic.

In the wash of the torch’s beam, I watched as he placed something small in my palm.  I moved closer to the light and studied what appeared to be a painted clay pendant.  There were hieroglyphs on both sides of the thing and a leather cord looped through the hole that had been punched into it.

“Did you find this?” I asked.

He shook his head.  “Made it.  This side has your name – Trowa – on it and the other…”

His tone petered out and I thought I heard him swallow.  I turned the oblong pendant over and, if I was remembering the hieroglyphs he’d shown me correctly, then this was—

“Your name?”

He chuckled.  It sounded forced.  Nervous.  “Er, yeah.  Just in case you forget where you got the damn thing—”

“Duo.”  I reached for him in the gloom, my voice little more than a breath of sound.  I framed his face in my hands, trapping the gift between his skin and mine.  He stilled and something deep inside me clicked into place.  Had I ever reached out so readily to touch another person?  I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.  I’d reached for Duo and he was letting me hold onto him.  “I won’t forget.”  I couldn’t.  I didn’t want to.

He didn’t tell me he’d be leaving soon.  He didn’t tell me he didn’t want to go.  I watched his lashes flutter downward, felt my heart pound in my chest as he looked at my mouth.  He leaned a little closer, into my hands which were rough and callused and a little grimy.  He leaned and waited.  Trusting.  Always so bloody trusting.

I closed the distance between us and kissed him.  He gasped against my lips, shifted forward, and I felt his hand land on my shoulder, his fingers curling into my muscles like claws.  I shivered and pressed harder against his lips, moving mine in an approximation of what I thought a kiss should be, going on instinct alone.

I moaned when I felt his tongue touch my lips.  I opened my mouth and kept it open, nudging against his lips until he filled the space with his tongue and I tasted him.  One hand migrated to his braid and the other to his arm.  He mirrored me, his fingers sifting through the short hair at the back of my head as his hand kneaded my shoulder.

He shivered when I stroked his tongue awkwardly with mine and then he retreated from my mouth.  I followed.  We kissed until our lips were raw and warm, tingling from the friction.  He was breathing hard when he pulled back and his eyes were pure black in the dim light.

“Trowa.”

It was only the sound of my name, but it made fire dance in my veins.  I shuddered.  I ached.  I was leaking inside my pants I was so hard.  It was exhilarating.  It scared me.

“I’ve never done this before,” he confessed.

I wasn’t sure what “this” meant, but it didn’t matter.  “As well,” I admitted and gave in to the temptation of his swollen lips.

He was my first.  The first real friend I’d made on my own, my first kiss, my first love.

Damn it.  I did have a heart after all.

It was on the tip of my tongue to offer to go with him, but how would I pay the airfare?  Where would I get the documents needed to enter the United States (or Britain or wherever he was going) legally?  I didn’t have a birth certificate or legal guardians.  Besides which, my shoddy passport read like it belonged to a mercenary, which it did.  They’d never let me past immigration.  And even if they did, what would I do in that far-off land of Duo’s?  Get a job?  Go to high school?  Where would I live?  Who would I _be?_

I groaned at the impossibility of it all.  God but I was going to miss him.

“Don’t forget me,” I whispered against his mouth, opening my eyes and watching him do the same.

He smiled, pressing his forehead to mine and curling his hand around the back of my neck.  “As if I could.”

I tried to breathe, but he was so close and warm.  I damned time for existing, for only giving us these few days to know each other.

“I’m gonna write to you,” he promised rashly.  “And you’d better write back.”

“And talk about what?” I challenged.  Even if his letters managed to find me, what would we write about?  What did we have in common?  Nothing.  It was hopeless.  Why bother trying to keep in touch at all?

“We’ll talk about whatever we want.  Chopin.  Dull razors.  Gun oil.”  He glared at me, impassioned and determined.  “Anything.”

“Right,” I agreed.

When he kissed me, I fell into the taste of him.  Duo taught me how to kiss that night, and he seemed to appreciate my novice skill at it, making soft noises in the back of his throat as he melted into my hands.  Maybe I was good at kissing but, if that were true, then it was only true in his case.  I was learning how to kiss _Duo_ and I knew I would not be kissing anyone else this way.  Never in a million years.

When he drew back again, he panted against my cheek, “D’you think this means we’re gay?”

I didn’t know and I didn’t care.  “Does it matter?”

“No.”  He burrowed his face between my jacket collar and my sweaty, dusty neck and breathed deeply for one breath… two… three…  “I’m never gonna forget,” he whispered.

I clutched him to me heedless of the weapons and dust and layers of cloth between us, rubbing my cheek against his ear, his hair.  I’d only known him for a few days, but I knew – _deep down_ – that I was never going to meet another person like him.

“We’ll see each other again,” I promised suddenly.  Someday, I’d have my own fortune.  Someday, I’d have the kind of knowledge he did.  I’d teach myself if I had to.  I’d spend every morning, afternoon, and night off reading whatever I could get my hands on.  Maybe I wouldn’t be his equal someday, but I was determined to hold my own, to look him in the eye as a man who didn’t have to have a gun in his hands in order to be useful.

“You’re damn right we’ll see each other again,” he growled and a tingle shot up my spine.  So, he was aggressive after all, just not about the things I’d expected.

We huddled in the dugout under the sail, arms wrapped around each other as we sat side by side.  I dossed and woke repeatedly to the feel of Duo shifting against me, pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth, waking me for another kiss.  I did the same to him, rousing him with a touch along his sleeve from elbow to shoulder until he lifted his face from my neck and offered his mouth to me.

We shared warmth and breath, kisses and whispers until false dawn began to brighten the sky.  With a last, gentle brush of too-sensitive and chapped lips – a single chaste kiss – I stood and nudged the sail aside for him.  He placed a hand on my shoulder and climbed out slowly, his muscles as cramped as mine from spending all night sitting in the cool, hard-packed dirt.

I walked him back to his tent in silence, stopping him by the entrance to pull him fully against me.  I wrapped my arms around him completely, petting his hair as I memorized the scent of him.  He clung to me just as tightly.  I brushed my lips along his jaw as I forced myself to let him go.

Leaving him there and heading back to my own bed was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.  I was shaking and nauseous with exhaustion.  My eyes were burning and itching, my vision blurring and swimming.  The last thing I wanted to do was crash and miss his departure, whenever it was, but that’s precisely what happened.

I came to hours later.  It was sweltering in the tent.  The sun was baking the fabric walls and my sweat-soaked clothes were clinging to my skin.  It was past noon my stomach told me with a growl.

Movement at the tent entrance startled me.  The gun was steady in my grasp even though my arm felt like jelly as I sighted down the barrel at the intruder.  It was the captain.  I lowered the gun.  He met my gaze and sighed.  In that moment, I knew that Duo was gone, gone back to where he’d come from and he wasn’t coming back.

“Yoh,” Captain Barton said, holding out a foil-wrapped military ration to me.  I took it with numb fingers.  “There’s hot coffee in your flask.  Take the day for yourself, Trowa.”

The captain gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder and then he left.

I sat and I shivered in the heat of midday in the desert.  I had never been so terrified in my life.  Nor had I ever been so determined.  My fingers curled around the energy bar in my hand as something unnamable and undefeatable clawed its way up from my belly: Duo had given me purpose, had opened my eyes to the future.  I didn’t want to spend it like this, no matter how much the troupe was like a family to me.

I raised my other hand to the pendant Duo had helped me tie around my neck.  It hung below my collarbone but above my heart.  I’d asked Duo to help me position it so that the strap from my rifle wouldn’t bump or rub it and end up breaking it.  I closed my eyes and remembered his warm weight against my side, his lips against mine, his taste on my tongue.

I’d never known my parents, but I couldn’t say I’d never known love.  Not anymore.

The dig carried on.  Days passed.  I walked click after click on guard duty, never getting anywhere.  I asked Lucrezia to let me borrow some of the camp’s reference books so I could try to understand what was going on around me.  Besides, it helped pass the time.

No one mentioned Lord Maxwell’s son to me.  Not even old man Bryce and he made it his mission in life to tease me about anything he could.  He teased me about my hair (“When are you gonna switch sides?  You don’t want to end up with half your face tanned!”) and about my seriousness (“Better not smile or your face’ll get stuck that way!”) and about my appetite (“Hurry up and eat, boys!  Trowa’s coming back for third helpings already!”) but he didn’t tease me about Duo even though he had to have known what had happened.  They all must have.

I waited weeks to hear from him.  Every day was longer and heavier to bear than the previous one.  Every day I felt a little more hope die, another edge of my expectation dull.  Eventually, I tried not to think about him at all.

And then—

A shadow fell over me and I startled, looking up from cleaning my rifle after my morning rounds.  Martins was grinning down at me.  I hadn’t heard him stomp over; I was listening to Beethoven.  I preferred Chopin, but Beethoven did not carry the same connotations for me, connotations I was trying to avoid.

I scowled up at Martins.  I could feel the lines deepening on my face.  I scowled a lot these days, but my irritation didn’t even register on his radar.  Grin widening, he waved a padded envelope beneath my nose.  It was taped and re-taped and stamped with a seal of inspection from the Egyptian Customs Authority.  I wiped my suddenly numb, jittery hands on my fatigues before I took it from him.

The return address was American and the handwriting was familiar.  The envelope itself was addressed to “Trowa Barton, junior security goon of Professor Merquise’s super-cool dig site” and beneath it was the professor’s university mailing address.

Smiling, I made a mental note to thank him for letting Duo use his faculty mailbox.

I slit the envelope open with my utility knife and stared at what slid out.  There was a digital notepad like the one Duo had used and a charger cable, complete with a voltage adapter.  I somehow knew that Duo had taken out a service contract for it before sending it to me.  I could probably send him emails from anywhere in the world.  Perhaps I could even access the electronic libraries he’d used.

He shouldn’t have done this; it was too much.  But it was also just enough to ease the constant ache in my chest.  I needed to talk to him more than I cared about letting him pay the bill for it.

I gave the inside of the envelope a cursory glance and was glad I did when I found a folded sheet of notebook paper wedged inside.  I opened it.  The message was simply “Do you miss me yet?” followed by a carefully printed email address.

Grinning widely, dismantled gun forgotten, I powered up the digital notepad and accessed the Internet.

I keyed in his email address and messaged him two words in reply.  I hit Send.

Leaning back against the tree where I’d first shaken hands with him, first been introduced to his braid and his enigma, I queued Chopin’s Nocturne, opus nine, number two as I waited and imagined where Duo was now, what he was doing, how soon he’d get my reply, the look on his face when he read my answer.

I smiled, picturing it.  Did I miss him, he wanted to know.

The answer was: _Of course._

Only five minutes passed before the digital pad buzzed in my hands and the screen illuminated.  I had a reply.  It was from Duo and it was only one word: //Good.//

My smile widened.

And then a second text message alert flashed.

//And, by the way, you still owe me that amusing anecdote.  From the Jeep.//

I laughed.  Ja, I guess I did.

I didn’t finish cleaning the rifle until something like two hours later and then it only got done because Duo had to get ready to go to school.

We were still worlds apart in more ways than one, but I had so much more now than I’d ever had before in my life: I had a purpose, I had a friend, and I had hope.

 

***End of Hieroglyphs***

 

****Fanart:**   **[glissandos and chords](http://tanuki02.deviantart.com/art/glissandos-and-chords-349245567)**  by tanuki02 on DeviantArt :: Totally Work Safe**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Fic Recommendation: Granate’s 1x2x1 fic, “Layers” uses many similar elements (and the details about archaeology are hella accurate, which is awesome). It’s a wonderful read and I highly recommend it.
> 
> I first encountered the image of Trowa with earphones on, listening to classical music, with a rifle in his hands in “Galileo” by Clever Young Theif. Loved it so much I had to develop it in this fic.
> 
> I know nothing about ancient Egypt or archaeology. If you spot any errors, let me know! (I’m in this for the Duo/Trowa, but it’d be nice to be accurate on the RL details.)
> 
> Here’s a super fun hieroglyphics “typewriter” for you to play with – http://www.eyelid.co.uk/hieroglyphic-typewriter.html (FYI: I've spelled Trowa's name as "Tro-a" in the story icon and header; the "w" seemed superfluous as it's nearly silent.)
> 
> Also, I’m not sure how soon wireless Internet service was widely available for Palm Pilot-type devices in Africa, but let’s assume that it was possible by the time Duo visited the dig site in 2009. And let’s also assume that Trowa didn’t have to assemble anything or charge the battery before using his for the first time.
> 
> Trowa’s voice is a mix of American, British, and South African slang and syntax since not all the mercenaries in this troupe are from South Africa. I only mention three and their origins (Captain Barton is from South Africa, Bryce and Martins are Americans) but there are others from completely different countries. I was going to use Afrikaans slang and words like “lekker” for Trowa in this first part but, in the end, I decided the Afrikaans would be too distracting from the rest of the prose and words like “lekker” (i.e. nice, good, great, awesome) were too casual for Trowa to use and still be in character. (But they will be sneaking their way in later.) So, the South African words and terms I’ve chosen for him often refer to a specific thing, like the kind of shoes Duo wears, or they regularly pop up in conversation, like “just now”, or can be used sarcastically, like “give rocks”. See South African English for definitions.
> 
> Why doesn’t Trowa go to school? I’m assuming it’s because mandatory education isn’t enforced in most African countries in this alternate universe. Trowa probably would be enrolled in school if he were living in an orphanage or something but, in this AU, living in an orphanage would be worse than being raised by mercenaries. I’m assuming he learned to read and write from the captain (and perhaps participated in distance learning via radio, which helps explain his correct usage of standardized English).
> 
> On the subject of mercenaries, I’ve decided to give the Barton Troupe a niche in protecting land and assets rather than fighting. Trowa undoubtedly knows how to fight and he lives a dangerous life, but I just didn’t want to get into all the civil unrest that occurs (and has been occurring) in Africa. This AU focuses on the upper class or local businesses or organizations which need a little extra muscle for guarding something valuable. Since the dig site is funded by Lord Maxwell (and not the Egyptian government in this alternate universe), they didn’t call in the Egyptian army to protect the integrity of the site. Although, if the army had better things to do anyway, the government might still have hired the Bartons even if the dig was state-funded.
> 
> In case you’re wondering, there really was a French settlement/colony in South Africa once, but it seems that they were more or less absorbed into the Afrikaans culture. In this AU, however, I’m assuming that there’s still a large French community in South Africa, so that’s where Trowa is from and why his first language is French. Goodness, I sure am getting a lot of mileage outta my Artistic License.
> 
> There is no NCS in this fic. No references to past NCS, either. Trowa, due to his nomadic lifestyle and the fact that mingling with “civilians” is not encouraged (by either the troupe or the civilians), has zero sexual experience. (Also, when you consider the kinds of people who would normally need to hire mercs, it seems highly unlikely that Trowa would take a personal interest in them or that his troupe would allow them to take an interest in him.) As for Duo, he’s pretty mature for his age so he’s not as interested as other boys in casual sexual encounters. (More on why he is the way he is later.)
> 
> I tend to write OTP (one true pairing) fics, and Duo & Trowa are it in this one. As to why there isn’t any sex yet: they’re just teenagers (and young teens at that). Not every teen has sex on the first date… or the second or third. Especially when they don’t have much experience or confidence. Gotta love it: uncertainty plus hormones equals epic make-out sessions.


	2. Ruins, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: language, shounen ai (that means boys who like and want to get nekkid with other boys)
> 
> Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and the characters are not mine. I just fangirl them like nobody's business.
> 
> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> The main story of "Tomb Raiders" begins NOW. We now jump forward three years in time to 2012. Duo POV
> 
> Theme music: Everything from the album "What If" by Earlyrise

“Oh, come on, Duo!”

I shook my head.  “I don’t wanna go, Hilde.  Just drop it.”

“But it’s your senior prom!  And you didn’t go to any of the other ones.  This is your last chance!”

“I’m aware of that,” I retorted wryly but with no intention whatsoever of giving in.

Growing up, I’d spent just about every school holiday following my dad and mom to obscure and remote places, to archeology dig sites in South America, Russia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.  Just to name a few.  I’d been to corners of the world where kids my age and younger had to work for a living, had to learn how to handle weapons before they’d ever touched a computer.  So what if I didn’t go to my stupid prom?  It was nothing but a pointless waste of time and money meant to piggyback on Valentine’s Day in order to counter the commercialism whiplash of the Christmas-shopping-spree season.  Which we were currently in the middle of.

“You’re a pal and a half, Hils,” I said, cutting across her next argument, “but there’s nuthin’ you can say that’s gonna change my mind.”

“Bet you would if your pen pal asked you to go,” she grumbled.

She was probably right.  Hell, I’d go to _Hell itself_ and back if Trowa asked me to.  Still, I somehow doubted that he’d ask me to go to prom.

He and I hadn’t seen each other in the last three years but, thanks to the miracle of communications satellites, we were keeping in touch almost daily.  Some days for freakin’ _hours_ at a time.  Those were the best.  The days when I didn’t hear from him at all were the worst.  On those days, I wondered if he was fighting, if he was injured, if his stuff had been stolen or his cell phone broken and I worried how in the hell I was gonna send him a new one, worried that I’d lost him not just to the anonymity of the eight or so billion people on the planet, but to death itself.  A million and a half horrible things could happen to him and I wouldn’t know until it was too late, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to help—!

I shook myself.

“You’re just jealous,” I retorted, rallying my composure.  I held the front door open for her and we escaped the school building with the rest of the student body, heading for the student parking lot and our cars.

She rolled her eyes and sighed.  Her breath puffed and plumed in the early-December freeze.  “I’d have to actually _see_ him to be jealous.”

“Hey!” I objected laughing, amused that she’d dismissed _me_ so easily.  I was a good catch.  Except that rumor had it I was gay.  Well, whatever.  Maybe I was.  In any case, I had zero interest in dating anyone from _this_ preppy prep school.

“That’s right, go on and defend your stud muffin invisible friend.”

I rolled my eyes.  “He’s not invisible.”

“But he _is_ a stud muffin?” she fished.

I refused to be caught.  “No comment.”  He was, though.  He so was.  And I _could_ have shared that much with Hilde, since I _did_ have photos of Trowa, but I’d promised him I wouldn’t show them to a soul.  Who’da guessed he was so shy?  He sure was photogenic, though; that was for _damn_ sure.

The latest in cell phone technology had built-in cameras, so when I’d sent him the most recent replacement for the Palm Pilot from three years ago, I made sure to include a model that had all the bells and whistles.  By way of thanks (and after I’d practically begged for a snapshot of him: “Hey, you can show off all your cool scars” and “I need it for my shrine to your Awesome” hadn’t budged his resolve, but with the simple “Please, Trowa – it would mean _a lot_ to me,” I’d hit pay dirt), he’d sent me a photo of himself looking adorably nervous in a threadbare tank top with the pendant I’d made for him three years ago still there resting against the center of his muscular chest.  That, plus the sight of his toned arms, had inspired me to redouble my efforts for the school swim team.

God but I missed him.  More and more with every day, it seemed.  The guy was damn funny and freakin’ smart and it burned me up that he was probably never gonna get outta that world of violence and uncertainty on his own.  I had to bite my tongue to keep from offering him Solo’s old room at my dad’s place at least five times a day.  I kept it down to about once a month, saving the offer for when he’d had a tip-top-shitty, my-life-reeks-like-rancid-cat-ass day.  But soon – just as soon as I got through graduation and my dad moved back to London – I was gonna have the apartment all to myself and then Trowa wouldn’t be able to use the old excuse about intruding on my dad.

Speaking of which, I was pretty sure my dad still didn’t know that his only living son was hung up on the memory of a three-years-ago, all-night-long make-out session _and_ was crushing harder with every passing day on a South African merc.

Jesus.  I couldn’t really tell you what I’d been thinking that night.  I mean, as a 15-year-old kid, any number of random stimuli’d had the potential to get my rockets charged and ready for boosting, but there’d been _something_ about Trowa.  Solid, grounded, quiet-but-not-silent, earnest-but-not-humorless, tough-but-not-callous Trowa.  Trowa, whose only self-indulgence seemed to be his iPod and collection of classical music.  I’d never met anyone like him.  Nor had I ever kissed anyone so dedicated to just existing in the moment.

Not that I’d kissed all that many people before him.  Just one.  Hilde, actually.  And it was a damn good thing she’d decided she hadn’t liked my long hair enough to overlook the fact that I was a boy because that meant we could still be friends and she could get on with convincing her would-be-girlfriend, Dorothy, to play for the home team.  Seeing as how they’d been going out for something like two years now, that alone told you how persuasive Hilde could be.

But after Trowa?  No, I hadn’t kissed anyone.  I didn’t want to.  I was still living off of my memories, as pathetic as that sounded.  Pathetic but so vivid and, in my memory, he tasted better every time.

Despite the temperature being like nine hundred degrees below zero and despite the ice-crusted snow crunching under my feet, I flushed, sweating inside my wool coat.

“Duo?”

“Huh?”  I looked up and realized I’d blindly followed Hilde over to her car.  Damn.  Where was my head?

I knew where it was.  It was in Ethiopia or Uganda or Madagascar… wherever Trowa was today.  And it was busy imagining how a night together with no interruptions would play out now that I was older and wiser (even if I wasn’t any more experienced) in the Way of the Hormonal Teenager.  (O, sacred path of the young and impatient!  Lead me to the light!)

I had to cut this out.  I could Kama Sutra myself into a jerk-off session _later,_ in the comforts of central heating.

“Watch out for the black ice,” I muttered.  But I could tell that the warning wouldn’t be doing _me_ any good.  I was probably fated to wrap my car around a lamppost or something when I started zoning out on His Hotness again.

“Black ice.  Got it.”  She smirked.  Yeah, I guess it was pretty obvious I wasn’t thinking about the road conditions.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Duo,” Hilde said and I got my ass outta there.

I unlocked the driver’s side door of my piece-of-shit, four-door sedan and slid in behind the wheel.  The engine turned over after a grumble of protest and the heater whined at me when I cranked it all the way up.  It really was a crap car.  I could have bought a new one like most of the student body here had, but I’d decided to save my trust fund allowance for, Trowa willing, a one-way airplane ticket from wherever in Africa to New York plus what it was gonna cost to get him suited up for life in the Big Apple: a driver’s license, a GED, maybe even a permit to own and carry a gun.  (I wasn’t sure if he’d want that last option or not, but I’d checked around and saved up for all the hoopla that went with it and OMG hella lotta _hello_ hoopla.)  Hell, I even had enough money saved up for an additional round-trip ticket to Africa just in case I had to go and drag his ass back here with me.

So, I had a shitty car.  Everyone assumed that I hadn’t gotten a hot new set of wheels because I’d pissed off my dad.  Well, they could go right on thinkin’ that.  I had bigger and better things on my mind.

Heh, speaking of which…

As I waited for the engine to warm up, I pulled out my cell phone and opened up the photo album on it, smiling at the picture of Trowa in that tank top.  I couldn’t see much else, but I got the impression that the tangle of shadows over his shoulder was the corner of his bedroll.  I liked that he’d sent me a photo taken of himself sitting up in bed.  I liked being able to imagine that the hand holding the phone up for the shot was actually hooked around the back of my neck, pulling me down to join him.  Yeah, I liked that _a lot._

In the second photo of my password-protected Trowa Only Folder, he was dressed in his fatigues with the jacket sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sitting on the hood of a battered Jeep smiling bashfully.  Then, at some point, his troupe buddies had snitched his phone and snapped candids of him.  There was one of him cooking over a camp stove, stirring a pot that looked like it was big enough to feed all fourteen guys in his troupe _and_ their egos twice over (Trowa actually looked kinda irritated in that shot).  And another of his profile against a cloudy sky as he took watch somewhere at the edge of a jungle (his eyes had never looked so hard).  And there was one shot of him cleaning a rifle while wearing his earphones (I remembered that look of peace on his face very clearly).  Finally, there was a photo of the whole troupe posed together.  It amazed me that these big, rough, battle-scarred and war-hardened guys could still smile.  Trowa stood off to the side, looking miffed that the older guy he’d called Bryce had dared to put an arm around his shoulders and give him bunny ears.

I was pretty sure that if _I_ gave him bunny ears, he wouldn’t be miffed.  Hm.  I’d have to ask him about that later.

I sighed and buckled my seatbelt.  As I pulled out to join the line of cars leaving the student parking lot, I thought about how it was getting harder and harder (Hah!  So true.) to keep our conversations from going into the realm of heavy flirting.  This had not been an issue back when wireless Internet service had still been patchy at best, but somebody somewhere had pushed some big, red button or other to make the whole shebang just _groove_ and now we didn’t have any “lost carrier signal” alerts to interrupt our chats which were veering toward the realm of intense with increasing frequency.

Time and time again, I had to tear my thumb away from the Send button on my iPhone, delete the text message I’d just entered, and start over.  Yeah, I wanted to know if he still thought about my last night at the dig site in Egypt.  Yeah, I wanted to know if he felt hot all over and his lips tingled and he got hard remembering it like I did.  It was killing me to not send those messages, but I was planning to ask him to come and live with me (and I wasn’t gonna take “no” for an answer) and I didn’t want him to feel like I wanted him here just because he was hot and I was horny.  (Both of which were totally true, but I knew, intellectually, that they should _not_ be the most important factors in making a life-altering decision.  Damn it.)

Since I was off from work today (the old ladies at the neighborhood Super Mart would have to bag their own groceries tonight), I went directly home.  I wanted to get as much of my stupid homework done as I could before Trowa texted me later.  My dad was still at the office, so I grabbed a peanut butter sandwich and cracked my books open on the kitchen table.  I was almost ready to shove my calculus homework down the garbage disposal when my iPhone buzzed with an incoming message.

It was from Trowa.

//All clear?//

//Clear enough.  Who needs calculus, right?//

//Not I.  I’m pretty sure all you need is Beowulf.  He’ll slay it for you.  In extensively descriptive prose.//

I laughed.  //Been doing your homework, huh?//

//For better or worse.//

I’d been sending him lists and links of the reading material I was doing in my classes over the past three years.  He didn’t have time to do all of the work, and he sure as hell wasn’t writing papers on any of it or taking any exams, but we chatted about the stuff he managed to get through.  I loved getting his take on it.  Sometimes it was like talking to someone from another planet what with the weird ass, pure genius shit he’d come up with.  Once or twice, I’d passed on points he’d raised to my classmates and teachers during actual class discussions just to see what happened.  I never claimed the ideas as my own in my papers, or anything, but Trowa got a kick outta some of the reactions I’d reported back to him.

He sent me a second text message.  //Beowulf needs to stop getting his friends killed.//

//No kidding.//  Being the last guy standing was not a ringing endorsement for a hero in my book.

//Actually, he reminds me of James Bond.  Cocky and unbearable, but able to deliver.//

I snorted.  //Don’t you dare let that psychopathic glory-seeking demon-fucker on your team.//  I paused and then added, //Or Beowulf.//  I wondered if my jab at Double-Oh Seven had made Trowa laugh.

He answered, //They’d make decent human shields.//

I could imagine.  Frowning, I typed out, //Just so long as you’re not one of them.//

//I’m always careful.//

//And you’re always Trowa.  Even better!  Hey, what would you do if you caught me giving you bunny ears in a photo?//

I sent that message and waited… and waited… and waited a bit more.  I slouched back in the wooden chair, crossed my feet at the ankles, and tried not to acknowledge how nervous I was.  I was flirting with Trowa.  Flirting was off-limits.  But I wasn’t gonna back down now, so I prompted him with: //Shall I rephrase that in the form of a multiple choice question?//

//As long as A, B, and C involve a private room, lack of clothing, and a big bed.//

I cackled gleefully.  My hands trembled.  //I’m thinkin’ you’re gonna go for “D, all of the above.”//

//Yes.//

I clenched my jaw.  My fingers tightened around the phone.  Jesus, I wanted him.  //You still think about that night?//  I sent it before I could second guess myself.

//All the time.//

I did, too.  //Can I call you?//  I wanted to hear the sound of his voice so bad.  So, so bad.  Even if I’d only just talked to him last weekend.  It was rare that he had the privacy to speak to me but when he did his voice dropped into a low register that was reserved for moonlight and rumpled bed sheets.  The topic, however mundane, was irrelevant.  His voice was magic.

//I’m sorry.  We’re trekking to a new location now.  I’m in the bakkie with Martins, Bryce, and the captain.//

It took me a second before “bakkie” clicked: _a pickup truck._   Close quarters, that.  Definitely not the place for a private conversation.  I chuckled.  //Ah.//  I sent that and then typed out a second message.  //On a scale of 1 to 10, how risky is this new job?//

//1.5//

//??//

//We’ve been grafted to guard some international company’s apartment complex for the year.  Cush job.//

//Where?//

//Lagos.//

I scowled.  //That is not a “cush” place.  You watch your ass, Tro, or I’ll come over there and kick it.//

//You make me laugh.//

//Somebody has to.//

There was a long pause after that and I wondered if he was having the same kinda trouble I was breathing around the _whatever_ that was sitting in the center of my chest like a ton of bricks.  I cleared my throat and typed in a new message.

//A 1-year contract, huh?//

//Tentatively.  Renewable every 3 months.//

//Good, ‘cuz I’ve got an offer for you, Trowa Barton.//

//?//

//From June.  Including room and board.//

When he didn’t jump to reply, I quickly texted, //Just think about it.//

//You’re all I think about.//  This reply popped up with satisfying speed.  //The guys are getting siek-n-sat of all my daydreaming.//

//I feel your pain.  My classmates have been demanding proof of your existence.//

//A photo???//

 _Three_ question marks.  Holy crap.  I could just imagine the wide-eyed look on his face and the sweat dewing at his temples: Tro-caught-in-the-headlights-of-oncoming-destiny.

I quickly answered.  //Don’t worry about it.  I’m stronger than their peer pressure.//  I sent that and then added with blunt honesty, //Besides, if you really were just a figment of my imagination, you wouldn’t be halfway around the damn world, headed for Nigeria.//

//In that case, I almost wish this was a dream.//

I grinned.  It wasn’t a promise to take me up on my offer in six months, but it was _promising._

I startled as I heard the rattle and slide of the key in the front door.  //Dad’s home.  Watch your back, Tro, and all the other bits, too.//

//Always.//

I slid the phone back in my pocket just as my dad entered the kitchen.  “Which friend was that?” he asked, loosening his tie.

“Trowa,” I answered.  I wondered if he was asking out of habit or because he was holding out hope that I was finally showing an interest in one of the girls from school.

“Didn’t you speak with him just last weekend?”

I tracked his movements as he pulled down a tumbler from the cupboard and poured himself a glass of water.  “Yeah,” I said.  I didn’t tell him that I was in contact with Trowa just about every day.  That might freak him out a little bit.  It was one thing for me to be helping Trowa with his education.  I wasn’t sure how he’d take it if he figured out we were joined at the digital hip.  I said, “You know I send him my school assignments.  When he has time, we go over ‘em.”

My dad turned and smiled at me.  I smiled back.  “You’re a good friend, Dominic.  I’m proud of you.”  I grinned wider as he patted my shoulder.  “How’s your schoolwork coming along?”

I shrugged.  “Calculus makes me feel like I’m a couple evolutionary steps down from an amoeba.  Other than that, I’m great.”

He chuckled.  “So I see.”

“How was work?” I probed, wondering how much of a holiday we were gonna have this year.  Christmas was always hard what with mom and Solo being gone.  Even though their Cessna had gone down in Kamchatka something like eight years ago, it was still a bitch and a half getting through those damn family holidays.  Dad and I traveled a lot doing the tourist thing, mostly to escape how empty it was here at home.  Twice since Egypt, we’d gone to other dig sites, one in Peru up in the Andes and another in the Arizona desert.  My chest ached at the memory of how painfully similar but how agonizingly different the Mohave had been from the Sahara.

“Work is manageable,” my dad answered, giving me a smile that I recognized.  It was the same one he’d given me before announcing that I was going to Egypt with him to see an actual dig site at an ancient tomb.  Three years ago.  Where I’d met Trowa.  I _knew_ that my dad wasn’t about to suggest a trip to visit _him,_ but my heart started racing so fast it just about caused my chest to explode.  Whatever he had planned was gonna be special; the Andes and Arizona sites hadn’t warranted the ol’ grin-an’-sparkle.

“And?” I pressed, feeling my hands fist.

By way of answer, he fished out an envelope from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and placed it on the table in front of me.  I picked it up and blinked at the air tickets inside.  “Vientiane, Laos?”

“Laos,” he confirmed.  “There’s a site in the south I’d like to see, a place your mother was researching.  What do you say we make a holiday of it?”

I grinned.  “Bonus.  This totally PWNs.”

He laughed as he got up and pushed his chair in.  He reached over and mussed my bangs.  “If I’m not mistaken, that means I’ve just scored the game-winner.”

“Big time, dad.  Big time.”

The buzz lasted long enough for him to give me the 101 on traveling to Southeast Asia.  There’d be a medical checkup and vaccinations involved (whoo-hoo) but it wasn’t like we’d never done that song and dance before.  I got on the Internet and started looking up useful phrases in Lao for us to learn and I researched all those putzy-yet-strangely-exciting details like reliable transportation throughout the country, the dependability of emergency medical treatment, and the morbidly interesting tourist scams that were currently fleecing the unaware.

It wasn’t until I’d relocated to my bedroom, iPhone in hand, and had just typed in a message to Trowa that my enthusiasm dulled and dimmed.  //Dad and I are going to Laos in ten days.//  I stared at the text, wishing the letters would rearrange themselves, wishing there was a G in the name of our destination.  Sighing, I sent it and then set my phone down before forcing myself to dive back into the eighth circle of hell, otherwise known as calculus.

About an hour later, just as I was starting to seriously consider burning my textbook and starting a movement to end the cruel and unusual torment that was _rampant_ in the American school system, Trowa messaged me back.  //That is not much of a holiday destination.//

I scooped up my phone and swiveled around in my desk chair to kick my bedroom door shut.  Y’know, just in case.  //I know.  I’ve been looking it up online.  But we’ll be fine.  Dad knows judo and aikido.//

//Stop joking about this.//

//It’s what I do!//

//Damn it.  Now I know how you feel when I take on a new assignment.//

I blinked at the phone screen.  He was _worried_ about me?  Well.  Would wonders never cease.  I typed back, //Hey, you know you’re the first person I’d call if I needed a lookout while I kicked someone’s ass or encountered a jar of peanut butter I couldn’t open or something.//

//Ja, and I’ll just wiggle my ears and magically appear.//

//Can you do that?//

//Magically disappear and reappear?  It’s called stealth.  Limited range only.//

I snorted.  //No, smartass.  Wiggle your ears!  Can you do that?//

//Can’t everyone?//

//Um, NO.//

//I guess that makes me special.//

//No shit, Tro.  Tell me something I didn’t know five minutes ago.//  I hit Send and then got one more comment out there before I could get too distracted imagining the endless possibilities concerning his wiggle-able ears.  //Save your ears.  Use a plane ticket.//

//Easy for you to say.//

I winced at the reminder of his troupe’s financial insecurity.  It tore me up that Trowa was risking his life every day _just to stay alive._   Those kinds of dangers ought to translate into something that would one day help him get _ahead_ of the game.  It was so unjust I could puke.

I told him, //I’ve been saving up my spare change.//  I sent that and kept right on texting, //But I’m hoping to use it to invite you to my place for the indefinite future, so I’d better not have to kick ass or deal with any stuck jar lids while I’m there.//

There was a long pause after I sent that.  In fact, it was so long, I started swiveling my desk chair back and forth as I waited for his reply.  And then, surprisingly, my iPhone rang.  It was Trowa’s number.  Damn.  He usually asked before he called.  Or warned me.  Or something.

“Trowa?” I asked, picking up.

“You thought you were texting someone else?”

Oooh, his voice.  It was my drug of choice.  “I was sure hoping I wasn’t.”

“Hm,” he purred.  He probably didn’t mean for it to be a purr, but it freakin’ came out like one.

I bit my lip and took a deep breath.  “So, what’s up, man?”

There was a beat of silence and then he murmured, “We ought to be having this conversation in person.  Barring that, the sound of your voice will do.”

“Conversation?” I squeaked.  The hell?  That sounded… fateful.

“’The indefinite future’?” he quoted, turning those three words into something that made my throat go dry, my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, and my heart pound painfully.

“Duo?” he prompted.

“Yeah.  The indefinite future,” I confirmed.  “I, uh…  You…”  I took a deep breath and blurted, “Look, you’re not about to break up with me, are you?”  Shit.  Could I sound any more pathetic?

“Break up with—!”  He bit off whatever he was about to hiss next, paused, took a deep breath, and said, “No, I am _not_ breaking up with you.”

“Oh.  Oh, that’s good,” I answered lamely, slumping bonelessly over my computer desk in relief.  “I did tell you we were going steady, didn’t I?  At some point?”

“Not exactly,” he replied.  “But I sussed it out.”

Yeah, it was pretty obvious how far gone I was for him.  Still…  “You realize how sexy your smart is, don’t you?”

“Duo,” he answered, a bit of a growl entering his tone.  I shivered.  “Are you asking me to come to the States to live with you… permanently?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause.  “I can’t do that.”

“You can.  If you want to.”  Oh, how I wanted him to.

“I’d need a visa and a miracle.  My passport is good enough for travel within Africa and maybe other places with very loose standards for foreign visitors, but I’ll never get through immigration in the States or Europe.”

I took a deep breath.  “Promise me you won’t get mad,” I intro’ed.

“What have you done?”

“I… I asked our family lawyer to set you up with all the right paperwork.  He’s just waiting for you to say yes, man.”

“When did you do this?”

“Uh, a while ago.”

“Duo,” he insisted.

I squeezed my eyes shut.  “Right after we got back from Egypt.”

He was silent for a long moment.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You kept shooting me down every time I offered to put you up at me an’ my dad’s.  But once I’m done with school this summer, he’s goin’ back to London and I was hoping… I mean, since my dad wouldn’t be an issue, I thought maybe you’d…”  I forced myself to shut up.  I was not going to start whining.  I was not.

“Are you sure?  You want me t—”  His voice actually broke.  “—to live with you?”

“Hell yes, I’m sure.  I’ve been sure for three damn years, Trowa.”  I took a deep breath and then I took the plunge.  “I want you.”

Suddenly, I was glad he could hear me.  There was no way I wasn’t blushing bright red right now, but my tone was factual, soft, and hopefully conveyed my need to just spend time with him.  Yes, I had sex on the brain (who didn’t at my age?!) but Trowa was my best friend and the distance between us has been slowly killing me ever since I’d forced myself to climb into the Jeep for the last time at Professor Merquise’s dig site.  I’d looked back until the camp had disappeared from view, wondering if I’d get one more glimpse of Trowa, waiting for him to burst out of one of the tents and… I dunno.  Wave goodbye.  Watch me go _.  Something._

He still hadn’t said anything, so I asked, my heart in my hands, “Are you gonna give me a shot?”

A weird, little sound echoed through the connection.  Had he just hiccupped?  I frowned and opened my mouth to ask if he was OK…

He inhaled sharply, like he was trying to suck the snot back into his nose.  “D—uo,” he said thickly.

“I know I’m asking you to leave your family behind, and that makes me the worst kind of selfish dick imaginable.  I just…”  I just had no idea how to convince him to be selfish and do something for _himself_ for a change.  If he did, in fact, really want out of that life.  Maybe he didn’t.  Maybe I was the only one who needed help here.

“Stop.  Stop talking, Duo,” he ordered softly, unevenly.  “You’re killing me with every bloody thing you say.”

I bit back the apology that jumped up from my gut.  I listened to the sound of heavy, uneven breaths and the rasp of cloth passing over skin, like he was wiping his face with his jacket sleeve.  Shit; I’d made him cry.

I waited, wondering if he was gonna refuse me.  I didn’t know what I’d do if he did.  Could we still be friends?  Could we just go on like this?  Forever?  Could I just stand by and let him risk his life again and again when it was within my power to help him help himself?

Leaning back in my chair, I blinked up at the ceiling, hoping the heat in my eyes would evaporate harmlessly.

“Yes.”

My heart stopped.  “Yes?”

He took another breath and replied in a steady tone.  “Yes, I’ll go to America.  Or wherever you’re going to be.  I’ll be there.”

I grinned up at the blurry ceiling.  “Awesome.  That’s… that’s awesome, Trowa.  I’ll tell Mr. Noventa to email you so he can update your visa application and stuff.  It’s still gotta go through the immigration offices and whatever—”

“What should I do?”

“Stay alive.”

He laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“I know,” he replied, an apology in his tone.  “But you worry too much.”

“Well, I gotta do something with all this pent up energy.  And if you suggest that I take up yoga, that’ll only give my wild imagination more material to work with.”  Which it did _not_ need, thank you very much.

“Hm,” he remarked, sounding amused, and then cleared his throat.  “Duo, are you _sure…?”_

“Yes.  But if you’re not, don’t tell me, ‘K?  You can break it to me after you get here.”

He sighed.  “Whatever happened to trusting me?”

“Dude.  You did not just say that.  I trust you like _whoa.”_

He contemplated that for a minute before saying, “Do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Trust yourself.”

I inhaled sharply.  It was easy for him to say.  He of the hotness and mad soldier skills, he of the super smarts and sharp wit, he of the depthless gentleness and warmth once you cracked his blank-faced armor, _he_ didn’t have anything to worry about.  I was just a geeky rich kid with long hair and a crush that made me cream my pants twelve times a day (and that last point was probably a recognized medical condition).

Before I could argue, he told me, “I’ll be with you soon.  I promise.”

No, it wasn’t just a promise.  It was a vow.  I shuddered.  “But the troupe…?”

“I go where I’m needed, where I want to be.  I’ll talk to the captain.  He’ll understand.”  I gulped, feeling so thankful I couldn’t think of anything to say.  Trowa continued, “What’s more, I don’t think he’ll even be surprised.”  He chuckled roughly, like he was tripping over another tear or two.  “He’ll be happy for me.”

I would, too.  I would be happy for him if he just got the hell outta there.  The rest of it – the staying with me and the spending time together and the whatever else – didn’t even come close.  Even if I did fantasize about it waaaaay too much.

“I’ve never—”  I took a deep breath.  “It’s never felt like this—”  I stumbled again.  “It’s you, damn it,” I told him.  “You do this to me and don’t you dare even think about apologizing for it.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” he rasped in reply.

I laughed, wiping at my cheeks with my sweater cuff.  Christ.  I was acting like a damn _girl._

“I have to go,” he told me after a moment.  “Pit stop’s over.”

“Back on the road again?”

“Yah.”

“Wear your seatbelt.”

“Yah, _auntie.”_

I laughed and, on that note, we hung up.  I clutched the phone in my hands.  I was shaking.  Jesus, this was the part where God looked down, noticed how peachy my life was, and decided to send a lightning bolt at the person I loved most in the whole damn world.

Yeah, it was true.  I loved him.  After three years, it was kind of inevitable.  I hadn’t told him yet, but he was a smart guy.  I was pretty sure he’d already figured it out, maybe even before I had.  I grinned.  Yeah, I could always count on Trowa to know the score.

Hilde more or less pounced on me at school the next day, demanding an explanation for the goofy grin on my face.  I confessed to the trip to Laos, but not the rest of it.  I could tell she was suspicious that something else had happened, but I gave her my Grin of Titanium Stubbornness and she let it go in favor of hunting up Dorothy for a round of kissy face before the bell for first period rang.

Although, our exchange made me realize that didn’t know exactly _why_ we were going to Laos in the first place.  I mean, what was so great about that ruins or archeology site that had piqued my mom’s interest?  And then there was another point to consider: she’d been to dozens of ancient sites, so why was my dad so interested in seeing this one?  I didn’t have a chance to really ask him about it until we were already on the plane.  (Well, OK, I could have _made_ time and asked him sooner, but he couldn’t squirm his way out of answering with some lame excuse about having to work or something once we were trapped in a pair of first class seats together.  This was my chance and I went for it.)

I grabbed his complementary eye mask and headphones, fully prepared to negotiate their safe return for satisfactory answers to my questions.  I suppose he _could_ rout my offensive by asking to borrow some from the heir-to-some-mega-company Chinese kid across the aisle, but the guy looked like he was wound up tighter than his shiny, black ponytail.  My dad seemed to come to the same conclusion: he turned toward me with a long-suffering sigh.

I pounced.  “Why was mom so interested in where we’re going?  And how come you’ve suddenly decided to go there?”

He leaned his head back against the high-tech headrest.  “How did I know you wouldn’t wait until we checked into the hotel?”

“Um, because I’m your son?”

“Right.  There’s that.”

I waited for a second, giving him an expectant look.  When he didn’t volunteer the answers to my questions, I cleared my throat.

He blinked at me guilelessly.  OK.  Time to haul out the big guns.  “Last chance to spill the beans or guess what I’m gonna tell the flight attendant is your _favorite food_ in the whole universe?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, Big D.”

He laughed.  It was an old joke between us.  He was the “Big D” – “D” as in “dad” – and I was the “Little D” – “D” as in “Dominic.”  It’d been ages since we’d called each other that, though.  Dinosaur ages.  And I wasn’t so little anymore.  I kinda wondered how I measured up against Trowa now, actually.  Damn.  Imagining myself standing toe-to-toe with Trowa was _not_ helping my concentration.

“All right, Dominic,” my dad relented.  “So long as I have your word that you will not ask the flight staff to set aside a chicken dinner for me.”

I smirked.  I knew he hated airline chicken with a _passion._   The things you learned about your parents when you were traveling, right?

He reached under the seat in front of him and pulled out his carry-on bag, tugging out a letter-sized manila envelope and handing it to me.

“You recall I went back to London last month?”

I nodded.  The company’s headquarters had been moved to New York when he’d married my mom, Helen, but they’d been in London for decades before that.  It was still a huge office and he had to travel between the two about every six weeks.  Once I started college, he’d be transferring himself back there permanently and reinstating it as HQ.  Thank God he wasn’t expecting me to team up with him and become the next Maxwell Mogul anymore.  Corporate management was so far removed from my dream job it was laughable.  That’s why I’d stopped going on business trips with him last year.  He’d finally believed me when I’d told him I was going to Columbia University for my undergrad degree in Egyptology.  It was either that or I was gonna adopt no less than sixteen Pomeranians and name each and every one of them after him.  As he was violently allergic to dogs, it was the perfect threat.  And as he knew I’d rather gouge out my own eyes than make him miserable, he knew I meant business.  I didn’t know who the next Maxwell Mogul was gonna be, but it wasn’t gonna be _me._

Sighing, he admitted, “While I was there, I drove out to the house.”

The house.  I could barely remember it.  The last time I’d been there must have been when I was about seven years old.  All I could recall about it was that it was massive and awesome and it had a dumbwaiter that I’d had an unnatural fascination with.  Oh, and the groundskeeper geezer had been pretty cool.  Freaky, but cool.

“Howard must’ve been happy to see ya,” I remarked.

“We had a pint,” my dad admitted and I could just imagine it: my dad with his shirt sleeves rolled up sitting across the island in the kitchen from a skinny, balding dude in sunglasses and an Aloha shirt, a couple beers sweating on the countertop.  Hell, he might have even convinced my dad to blast a roach with him.  Looking back on my memories of the man, he was a dead ringer for a pothead.  Heh.  Good ol’ Howie.  I hoped he was a not-so-good influence on my dad.  The man needed to live a little.

He continued, “I went to your mother’s library and looked through her notes, the ones in her safe.”

I followed his gaze down to the unopened envelope in my hands.  Spilling the contents onto my tray table, I squinted at page after page of sketches, diagrams, maps, and notes.  “This isn’t just for Laos,” I realized, identifying something that looked Russian, something maybe Chinese, another something that had Mount Fuji labeled on it, various notes in Egyptian hieroglyphs and what looked like latitude and longitude coordinates (also written in ancient Egyptian).  All kinds of crap.

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed.  “Helen loved history, but what captivated her was legend, mystery.  And this is perhaps one of the most obscure of all.  Of course she had to uncover it.”

“What is it?”

“A gateway.”

“Eh?”

“Legend has it that there exist gateways which connect our world to other dimensions.”

I blinked at him.  “Seriously?”

He shrugged.  “I’m simply repeating what’s written there.”

“And mom was looking for these?”

My dad nodded.  “Yes, for nearly a decade.  In fact, when she and Solo were—were killed, they’d been on their way back from the island of Sakhalin which is… here,” he said, sifting through the yellowed pages and pulling out a map.

I studied it, frowning.  “But their plane was found way up here, in Kamchatka.  What were they doing so far northeast?”

When he didn’t answer right away, I looked up.  His expression was thoughtful and older than I could ever remember seeing.  He’d met and married my mom late in life, but it kind of hit me suddenly that he wasn’t in his prime anymore.  My old man was, well, becoming an old man.  He confided, “For a long time, I wondered about that, too.  I suppose I wasn’t ready to know, not until I went back to the house in November.”

“So there _was_ a reason?” I pressed.

“Oh, yes.  Absolutely.”

“But you’re not going to tell me,” I guessed wryly.

He nodded to the papers in my hands.  “After you get through reading all that, I think you’ll understand why I’m hesitating to share my suspicions.”

I groaned.  There must be something like fifty hand-written pages here, all with faded ink.  Going through all this was gonna give me a monster migraine.  “Oh, c’mon.  Gimme a preview.”

He shook his head.  “I’m not telling you because… it’s completely crazy.”

I smirked.  “Crazy, huh?  Well, mom always was one to think outside the box.”

“As are you.”

I looked up, startled by his somber tone.

The look on his face kind of scared me.  It was so… vulnerable and sad and a billion other things… like he was watching his life flashing before his eyes.  “You take after her in so many ways.”

I gaped at him.  I didn’t have a single, solitary clue as to what I ought to say to that: uh… _thanks?_   I stared at him stupidly as he unbuckled his seatbelt and lurched into the aisle on the way to the lavatory.  He almost bumped shoulders with another passenger, a tall man in his thirties with carefully styled, short auburn hair.  There was something about him that caught the eye, something that made me think his silk dress shirt and swanky suit should have been breeches and a waistcoat from some long-forgotten aristocratic heyday.

“I beg your pardon,” the man murmured politely as he passed my dad.  He caught my gaze and gave me a bland smile before sliding into his seat which happened to be directly behind mine.

For some reason, I really didn’t like knowing that he was possibly looking over my shoulder at my mom’s legacy.  I shuffled the pages together and hunched myself over the tray table as I began to read.  I left the airline conveniences I’d been holding hostage on my dad’s seat as a peace offering.

When my dad came back, he didn’t say anything about the release of his sleep aids.  He put on his eye mask and plopped his headphones on.  I let him rest.  I was busy being impressed, amazed, and terrified.  Jesus Christ.  My mom’s notes made it sound like she’d really _believed_ that there were portals to other worlds right here on Earth but, according to her research, only one had the potential to unleash a power of destruction that would be undefeatable.

 _“I must find the key,”_ she’d written, her handwriting turning into a scrawl in her passion or haste or fear or excitement.  I would never know which. _“Even one of its halves would suffice.  The portal is nothing without the key.”_

The key.  Well, I guess it’d be pretty irresponsible to leave a gateway like this hanging open somewhere unlocked.

I shook myself.  Did I honestly believe there actually was a mystical, God-power gateway that needed to be locked shut with a key?  This was nuts.  Nuts, but apparently the reason for why I’d just gotten vaccinated six ways to Sunday.

I continued reading, getting caught up in my mom’s passionate narrative.  It was disturbing on so many levels: I’d never even _guessed_ that she’d felt so strongly about anything.  It made me wonder what else I hadn’t known about her, what else she might have kept hidden from me.  It made me wonder if my life, if the _world,_ really was the open book I’d always assumed it was.  I felt naïve.  I didn’t like it.

I could kinda see why dad had wanted to tell me this after we’d gotten to the hotel.  International flights weren’t the best places for life-altering epiphanies.

Speaking of epiphanies, my mother seemed to have experienced one on the final page of her notes:

_“This portal must **never** be opened.  It will be the end of everything.  If even one half of the key can be destroyed, then it will be impossible to open the gateway and the power within will never be permitted to be unleashed.”_

I squinted at the attached scrap of paper.  On it was a partial translation of what looked like Chinese characters.  She’d written as many as five words in places, scratching them out, unsatisfied.  Words like “universe”, “mirror image”, “polar opposite”, “annihilation”, and “unstoppable” were barely legible.  Looking at the attempt at translation, I could kinda see why she’d decided that the portal was best left alone and unopened, wherever it was.  But, what was more, she wanted to _make sure_ that it could never be opened.

As I flipped through the papers, my gaze snagged on a map of a long island north of Japan and east of the Korean peninsula: Sakhalin.  With a flash of insight, I realized that she’d gone there with Solo to find one of the halves of the key to destroy it.  I thought back to the crash in Kamchatka.  There were a lot of volcanoes there in northeastern Russia, active ones.  Had she found what she was looking for on Sakhalin and then been planning on dropping it into the mouth of a volcano?

How _Lord of the Rings_ was that?

Dad was right; this was _crazy._  But why else would she have chartered a Cessna and flown up there if it hadn’t been for the purpose of destroying this evil key thing?

Still, if one of the halves of the key had already been destroyed, then there’d be no point in taking this trip to Laos.  Which meant that my dad believed that the first half of the key was still out there somewhere.  Why he believed this I wasn’t sure.  For the first time, I wondered about the forensic aspects of the plane crash.  Had it gone down on their way _to_ the volcanoes or on its way back?  Had one of the halves of the key turned up somewhere and that’s what had prompted dad to schedule this trip?

I glanced at him, scowling when he snorted out a snore in his sleep.  Damn it.  I guess I’d have to wait for answers.

And then I laughed at myself.  Christ, I was acting like I _believed_ this shit.  Oh, man.  I needed to have my head checked.  There was no such thing as a mystical portal of doom, no halves of a strange key.  This was a myth, a legend.  That’s all.  I glanced at my dad again and shook my head ruefully.  We weren’t heading to Laos because he’d fallen into the same trap as my mom.  But if that wasn’t the reason, then what was?

As I shuffled all the notes back together and slipped the manila envelope into my backpack, I contemplated my dad’s motivations for doing this.  He wasn’t young anymore.  I’d noticed how his business shirts were getting looser and looser in the neck; he was losing muscle and strength of body.  Maybe he was afraid he was starting to get too old for these jaunts around the globe on exotic, off-the-beaten-path excursions.  Maybe he was thinking about his own mortality and wondering if there might be something mystical and metaphysical out there in the world.  Maybe he just wanted to feel closer to my mom and this adventure was meant to accomplish that somehow.

Well, whatever the reason, we were headed for the ruins of a forgotten temple in Southern Laos where my mom’s notes speculated that one half of this mysterious key might be hidden.  There were several other locations that were likely candidates.  Nine in total.  They all met one or two vague, archaic geographical descriptions that had been left behind by some unknown guardian centuries ago.  Nine locations and two halves of a key which was necessary to open a terrible portal somewhere on Earth.

The scary part was my mom had seemed to think she’d known where that specific gateway was, but she had refused to name the location.  I was sure it was in these notes, though.  Maybe in some kind of code.

Well, anyway.  I knew she’d looked in at least one of these places.  Sakhalin was one of the likely candidates for the first part of the key, so I was pretty sure that the trip she and Solo had taken there had been an expedition to search for it.  I doubted that they’d actually found anything, though.  I mean, if they had, then this artifact thing (or some record of its discovery at least) would have ended up getting shipped back to the States with all their other stuff.  Well, what could be salvaged from the Cessna’s wreckage, anyway.  Unless the plane had gone down _after_ my mom had disposed of the artifact.  But what if the Cessna had crashed on the outbound portion of the flight?

I frowned.  Was it possible that the key was not only a real _thing_ but was even now lying somewhere in the mountains of Russia’s most northeastern peninsula?  Well, even if it was just sitting on a patch of grass or buried under loose rock, how would anyone recognize it as a key?  “Key” was a pretty general term and, given that this legend predated modern locks and keys, it probably wouldn’t be recognizable as a key to most people.

Maybe that was why we were going to Laos first?  If we found _that_ half of the key, then we’d probably have a better idea of what the other half of it looked like.  Hm, yes.  That sounded like a definite possibility.

And then I turned and let my head fall heavily against the wall of the plane.  Dammit, I was buying into the legend thing again.  I sighed.

Well, OK, I wasn’t _buying into it,_ per se, but my mom had believed it was real, and if this was a quest to understand her obsession with it, then I guess it was safe to assume that the artifacts themselves were real even if the legend aspect was just a story meant to scare the kiddies around the primeval campfire.

I tried to sleep, but I just couldn’t get my brain to shut off.  I kept thinking about obsessions and legends and plane crashes.  Can you blame me for not taking advantage of all the comforts first class had to offer?  It was a relief to feel the skid and rush of landing and be able to shuffle off of the damn thing.

Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I followed my dad toward immigration.  The phrases I’d learned in Lao weren’t really needed; the immigration officer spoke English as did the customs dude.  It looked like the taxi was my last chance to prove my language prowess.  Which I did.  In epic style, naturally.

“Where would I be without you, Dominic?” my dad asked as we pulled up in front of our hotel.

I smirked.  “Pantomiming in the backseat.”

He chuckled.

We had a single suitcase apiece which we wheeled into the lobby of the modest and slightly worse-for-wear establishment.  Maybe it was weird that we’d arrived in first class and then made reservations at a mid-level tourist factory like this, but it was all about priorities.  They were, in fact, the same priorities that made me buy a junker car for my first vehicle and work at the Super Mart to help pay for my car insurance and maintenance.  Oh and the cell phone bills for both my service contract and Trowa’s.  It’s kinda hard to explain, but it comes down to being _real,_ I guess.  I didn’t want to be one of those snobby rich people who didn’t know how to change a flat tire or couldn’t talk to people on the street.  It was easy to lock ourselves in our bubbles of good fortune and ignore the rest of the universe.  Too easy.  I guess that made me a guy who liked a challenge.

A challenge.  Yeah, I did like those.  I thought about Trowa.  I thought about when I’d arrived at Professor Merquise’s dig site and had just about fallen out of the Jeep thanks to the deep depression on my side of car… and then I’d almost tripped over the sand wrapped around my shoes when I’d shut the car door behind me… _and_ _then_ I’d practically had a heart attack when I’d looked up and found a soldier’s blank-faced stare on the other end of my gaze.

Jesus, he’d scared the crap outta me.  I hadn’t even seen him when we’d driven up and parked, but there he was.  Perfectly still, motionless, a statue.  It hadn’t been until his gaze had flickered down to my lucky T-shirt and his brows had twitched slightly that I’d realized he was only my age.  My age and standing there with a semi-automatic rifle dangling from the shoulder strap across his chest.

He hadn’t done or said anything, but I’d simply known I’d be making it my unofficial mission to figure him out while I was there.  Little did I know I’d end up falling head over heels for the guy on the other side of those passive, green eyes.  Passive.  Hah.  Trowa was passive like Kilimanjaro was a bump on the ground.

While I had the opportunity, I sent an email off to object of my thoughts, letting him know that a plethora of photos from Laos would be forthcoming so he might want to find an “Oh, shit!” handle to hang onto.

“Trowa again?” my dad mused in a too-casual tone as he unpacked and hung up his raincoat in the tiny closet by the room’s door.

“Uh, yeah,” I muttered, trying not to blush.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Mission Do Not Blush was failing.  “Uh… like what?”

He gave me a look and one of those I’m-trying-not-to-smile smiles.  When he glanced pointedly at the phone in my hand, I gave him a big, fake, cheesy grin.  There was no reason for me to feel like he’d just walked in on me performing maintenance on the equipment I kept in my shorts.  No reason at all.

“Nothing,” he finally said, moving to put his shaving kit in the bathroom.

I let out a breath of relief.  I was so not ready to have The Trowa Talk with him yet.  Hell, maybe I wasn’t _ever_ gonna be ready to scale that father-son peak.

“Let’s go see about our visitor permits at the park office,” he said from the bathroom and I jumped up off the bed, stuffing my feet back into my Converse All-Stars.

“Sweet.  Race ya to the lobby.”

He reentered the main room and looked a little taken aback.  “You’re carrying your backpack around with you?”

I guess I didn’t have to, but I didn’t want to take the time necessary to dig my wallet and guidebook outta the damn thing.  “It’s my training for hiking through the jungle.”  I did the classic strong man pose and showed off my impressive biceps.

Dad looked heavenward as if divine intervention was hiding up there with the crispified bugs in the ceiling fan light.  “What has the swim team done to my son?” he lamented.

“Less than the football team or the wrestling team or the basketball team would have.  Or, worse yet: golf.  Count your blessings.”

We had a lot of daylight left of our first day in Laos after we exited the park office, our applications submitted and undergoing review.  Our passes would be available after lunch the next day so I proposed a caffeine jolt followed by some touristy stuff.  I took so many photos I was pretty sure my iPhone was going to explode before I could send them to Trowa.

When we dragged our asses back to the hotel that evening about an hour before sunset, the first thing I did was kick off my shoes.  Then I collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting until dad called dibs on the shower.  I could tell from the way he didn’t mention it that he knew I’d be sending photos off to Trowa as soon as he left the room.  I focused on counting the dead bugs in the light fixture to keep from blushing _again._

As soon as the door closed behind him and the water started running, I had my iPhone in hand and was texting like mad, forwarding one photo after another.  Around photo number twenty, I decided to give him a little time to digest those and I finished off my show-and-tell with a snappy line – “This program has been brought to you by way hella OMG too much caffeine.  You’re sorry you missed it, aren’t ya?” – and then, just for the hell of it, I started scrolling through the photos myself.  Gradually, I noticed something strange.

Sitting up, I squinted at the crowd of people in front of the temple that dad and I had visited.  I went back to an earlier photo of an impressive memorial arch in the city and studied the faces in that crowd.  Then I pulled up the photos I’d taken of the farmer’s market we’d wandered through and…

I swallowed.  The same faces were in _each_ photo.  What.  The.  Hell.

“Dominic?” my dad called from the bathroom and I just about jumped outta my skin.

“Yeah?”

“Did you go through my shaving kit?”

“No.”  And then I thought to ask, “Why?”

“It’s a mess!”

I sat up straight and looked at our room with new eyes.  Had our suitcases been moved?  It sure looked like it.  I got up and opened mine.  Sure enough, the T-shirts I’d carefully rolled up and crammed into the space were all mashed and tangled together.  Yeah, it was possible that customs had inspected my bag at the airport, but wouldn’t they have put one of those nifty stickers on the outside if they had?

“Dad, I think you should check your bags.”

He came out of the bathroom in his striped pajamas, frowning.  “What?”

I gestured to my suitcase which was lying open on my bed.  “Someone went through my stuff.”

“Likely just a random security check at the airport.”

“Yeah, but check yours, OK?”

I clutched my phone as I sat down on my bed, Indian-style, and watched him open his luggage.  It looked like someone had stuck a live grenade in there and closed the suitcase back up.  OK, _one_ of our bags being selected for a random screening was possible, but both?  It still wasn’t impossible, but it was not nearly as likely.

Before I could prompt him, he reached for his carry-on bag.  He frowned into its depths.

“Is everything there?” I asked.

He nodded.  “But it’s all jumbled up.  Someone’s been through our things.”

The state of his carry-on bag couldn’t be explained by random airport passenger screening or a clumsy maid knocking it over while checking to see if we needed any towels.  I decided that now would be a good time to mention the _other_ thing.  “Some people were following us around today,” I told him, holding up my phone.  “I got photos of them at the temple, the arch, and the market.  Maybe the restaurant where we ate dinner, too.  I haven’t checked those pictures yet.”

I looked at him, at a loss.  He looked at me, a quiet horror widening his eyes.

“Dad?”

He held up a hand.  “Let me think for a moment.”  Hesitantly, he reached for his cell phone and just stared at it, debating.

In my hands, my iPhone vibrated, just about scaring the bejesus outta me.  It was Trowa and he was calling me.

“Hey, Tro.  Can I call you back la—”

“No.  I saw the photos.  There were five men following you today.”

 _“Five!?”_   I’d only seen three.

“Yah.  Professionals.  Get out of there, Duo.  _Now.”_

I gulped.  “Are… are you sure?”

 _“What do I do for a living?”_ he just about snarled.

“OK, that was a stupid question,” I admitted.

“Let me speak to your father.”

I passed the phone to him.  “It’s Trowa.  I sent him some photos.  He picked out the guys following us today.  We’re in deep shit.”

Normally, my dad would have scolded me for cussing, but he merely took the phone from me.  “Mr. Barton, what do you advise?”

I would have given my braid to hear the conversation that transpired.  Well, “conversation” wasn’t the word for it.  My dad mostly listened, nodded, and asked half-questions.  He then handed my phone back to me and grabbed a change of clothes before disappearing into the bathroom.

“Tro?  Fill me in, man.  What’s the plan?”

“You need to leave as soon as possible.  Get to the embassy or the airport.  If they have your room wired, then they’ll know that you suspect something, so you have to move fast.  But, if they _haven’t_ bugged your room, then you need to make sure you leave _quietly._   Travel light and leave under cover of darkness if possible.  Take the back door, go over a couple of streets, get a car or a taxi, and call me when you’re secure.”

“OK.”

“And don’t forget your mobile’s charger and adapter.”

I was tearing through my backpack even as he spoke, looking for it.  I dumped out my ebook reader and headphones and all the miscellaneous junk I’d carried onto the plane with me, stuffing my windbreaker, a hooded sweater, an extra pair of pants, some underwear and socks and a couple of T-shirts into the space in front of my mom’s notes.  “What’re the odds that we’re over-reacting?  They could be government shadow guys, right?  I heard tourists in China have to put up with that.”

“If that were case, they wouldn’t be carrying concealed weapons.”

I hadn’t noticed any weapons – concealed or otherwise – in the photos, but Trowa was the expert.  Hell, the only reason I’d noticed the weapons that Trowa’d been carrying in Egypt was because I’d been looking for them.  And, yeah, I’d been staring.  It’d taken me a coupla days to figure out _why,_ but I’d clued in eventually.

I said, “OK, so maybe they’re a group of muggers hoping for an easy score.”

“Then you make it as difficult as possible for them to get to you.  Bugger and fuck, Duo, people are _killed_ in muggings!”

“Right.  Point.”  I looked up as my dad came out of the bathroom, dressed for travel.  “We’re ready to go.  I’ll call you back in thirty minutes or something.”

“Watch your back,” he growled and hung up.

I hefted my backpack.  My dad picked up his carry-on satchel.  “Get the lights,” he said quietly.  I did.  We waited, letting our eyes adjust to the low light from the north-facing window, and then he opened the door, checking along the hall before motioning for me to follow.

We headed for the stairs and took them down to the first floor.  I was gonna feel really stupid if we were panicking over nothing, but if Trowa was worried…  Well, I trusted his judgment.

We snuck out of the hotel like thieves, like cheats, like cheapskates.  Under other circumstances, it might have been exhilarating.  Y’know, before the guilt hit.  Right now though, it was all I could do to keep from screaming as the tension tightened my guts into knots and bowties.

The emergency exit at the end of the hall beckoned even as it stretched out further and further in the distance with every silent step we took.  It seemed to take for freakin’ _ever_ just to get close enough to put my hands on the handle.  I checked over my shoulder to make sure my dad was right there.

“I’m first,” he whispered, stepping around me and opening the door, cutting off my half-formed thought about coming up with a game plan before the shit hit the fan.

All I could think of was the faces of the guys in the photos I’d taken.  I’d noticed three of them, but Trowa had made five.  The other two unknowns were seriously distracting me.  I recalled a big, bald guy at one place, but couldn’t recall seeing him anywhere else.  And there’d been some college kid taking photos at two of the sightseeing spots, Japanese or Korean by the look of him, but he’d been minding his own business… hadn’t he?

Well, I could kick myself for not getting a better look _later._

We stepped out into the alley and started for the furthest exit.  I guessed Trowa had given my dad the same sales pitch about picking up a taxi from a completely different street.  But, to do that, we’d have to cross a few major thoroughfares.  The sun was setting.  It was abnormally dark in the shadows but it seemed preternaturally bright out in the open by comparison.  Two foreign tourists skulking out of a dark alley were so gonna draw attention.

At the alley entrance, my dad glanced up at the sky, frowned, and then gazed out at the street.  There were two cabs in sight, idling in front of other hotels just across the street and down the block.  I wasn’t familiar enough with the cab culture here to be able to tell if they were available or not.  My dad hesitated, probably thinking the same thing.

“I can’t tell if they’re waiting for a fare,” I whispered, damning my useless tourist guide.

“It’s too close to our hotel,” he decided.  “We’ll cross the street and head down that alley there.”  He pointed and I nodded.

We waited until there was a break in the traffic and then we started jogging across the street, trying to look like we didn’t wanna get mowed down by a passing mini-truck instead of running for our lives.

It was a moot point, anyway.  A Jeep burst out of the alley we were headed for just as we reached the opposite side of the street.  I back-peddled faster than my dad.

“Go!   _Go, Dominic!”_ he hissed urgently and I sprinted down the sidewalk looking for another alley or a police station, a post office, or _anything_ public and brightly lit and official.  Or, hell, a shopping mall would do.  _Someplace_ where we could lose these guys and have a nice selection of witnesses to choose from.

A shout from behind me had me glancing back and then skidding to a halt.

_“DAD!”_

He was struggling with two massive guys, and one of them was the bald dude I’d seen earlier.  The other, I didn’t recognize, but the driver of the Jeep looked familiar.

 _“GO!!”_ he shouted back.

I stood there, torn.  I couldn’t… I couldn’t just _leave him!_

_“RUN, DOMINIC!  NOW!!”_

I shook my head.  No.  No, I was _not_ gonna—!

A second Jeep pulled up, jumping onto the curb behind me, caging me in.  Two guys swung out of the vehicle and hit the ground running… right at me.

Oh, shit.

The only options I had were to try and find a door to disappear through on this block or take my chances in the evening traffic.

I needed _exits!_

I dived for the road just as the nearest guy reached out a hand to grab my arm.  And then the whine of an approaching engine broke through my panic.  Suddenly, a motorcycle was spinning off of the street and burning rubber in a tight arc between me and my would-be abductors.

“Get on!” the rider shouted and I had a brief impression of messy, brown hair, blue eyes, and vaguely Japanese features.  The college kid tourist.

I hesitated.  I didn’t know who to trust, what to do, where to go.

“GET ON!!” he demanded, revving the engine and pulling a gun from inside his jacket.

That decided me.  I’d take my chances with the traffic.

“K’SO!”  I heard his curse as I lurched-spun-dodged my way into the middle of the street.  And, I wasn’t sure if it was exceptionally bad timing or good timing, but a cab screeched to a horn-blaring halt right in front of me.  I raised my hand and dived for the door.

The cabbie barked at me irritably as I slammed the door shut behind me.  “Sorry!  _Khaw thoht!”_ I choked out, gasping for breath.  “Talat Sao!” I commanded, coughing up the first name of a shopping mall that came to mind as I dug out my wad of Lao kip bills.

His suspicious look melted into one of satisfaction.  He was probably going to fleece me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.  We sped away and I watched, helpless and furious, as my dad was shoved toward the first Jeep.  The kid and the motorcycle were both gone.  And then a livestock truck started gaining on the taxi from behind and blocked my view.

God _damn it!_

Shit shit shit.

FUCK!!

I yanked my cell phone out of my pocket and started to dial Trowa’s number.  But no.  No.  Even though I wanted to call him first, by necessity he was gonna have to be second.  There was nothing he could do for me right now except tell me to calm down and call for help.

I pulled up my contact list and dialed.  It was the sound of my own breaths echoing back to me from the surface of the phone that made me realize I was hyperventilating.

I struggled for calm.  I had to be calm.  I had to get my dad back.

OK.  One step at a time.

“Noventa, Darlian, and Une,” a pleasant voice announced.

“Sylvia!” I just about shouted.  So much for calm.  “It’s Duo.  I need your help.  It’s an emergency.”

Mr. Noventa’s granddaughter and intern didn’t miss a beat.  “All right.  Take a deep breath, Duo.  Good.  Now let it out.  Very good.  Now, tell me what you need.”

A freakin’ miracle.  “I need you to talk to someone for me.  His name is Trowa Barton.”  I gave her his number and instructions for what she was going to do once she got ahold of him.  “And I need you to put me through to your grandfather.  _Now.”_

“Done,” she assured me and the line clicked as she transferred the call.

“Dominic?” I heard Mr. Noventa say, calm and steady.  The man was a freakin’ rock and I clung to him in lieu of the one voice that I desperately _needed_ to hear.  “What’s wrong?  Has something happened?”

I took another deep breath and began what was bound to be a long explanation, “Dad’s been abducted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> As for the kind of truck the Barton Troupe drives, this is sorta what I have in mind but without all the obvious weaponry attached (at least while driving on public roads): http://boeremag.synthasite.com/
> 
> Ja/Yah: In Trowa’s POV comments and in text messages (any POV), I use the spelling “ja” (which means “yeah” or some variety of affirmative, casual response). However, in Duo’s POV moments, when he hears Trowa say “ja”, it’s spelled “yah” because that’s how it sounds to Duo. Confused yet? (^__~)
> 
> As far as I know, the tourist features (which are mentioned very vaguely) in Vientiane, Laos are accurate as is the name of currency, the shopping mall, and how to apologize in Lao (but I dropped the accents for the sake of avoiding text/character errors and funkiness). The park permit procedure is fictional. The number of taxicabs in the city might not be accurate (i.e. tuk-tuks might actually be more plentiful). (And, on the subject of taxis, in South Africa, a taxi is a minibus or a shuttle, not a single-fare car-for-hire like it is in the U.S., so when Trowa tells Duo to get a car, he means a taxicab, and when he says to get a taxi, he means a bus.)
> 
> Also, from what I’ve gathered online, I kind of doubt that the traffic in Vientiane is really terribly fast or that someone could be grabbed off the street like Duo’s father, but just go with me here, people.
> 
> And, yes, that was a glimpse of Heero Yuy. We’ll be hearing more from him later.


	3. Ruins, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We now switch from Duo's POV to Trowa's.
> 
> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html

I waited, perched on the edge of my bedroll, grasping my mobile phone, willing it to ring.  Duo had said he’d call in thirty minutes.  I was counting them, enduring them, suffering them.

I had never been so bloody terrified and furious in my entire life.

I had never been so bloody thankful and relieved.  Thankful for the phone Duo had given me.  Relieved that I’d made a habit of reading his messages as soon as I got them.  I only hoped it was going to make a difference.

What I’d told him was the truth.  The men who showed up again and again on the fringes of his photographs were dangerous; they were mercenaries or rebels or professional kidnappers.  The razor blades in my gut were tearing-slashing-ripping through me at the thought of what men like that could do to Duo and his father, even if they were only in it for the money like their counterparts in South America who grabbed prominent businessmen and ransomed them back to their corporate offices.

When the phone continued to not ring, I snarled at it and reached under my cot for my rucksack.  It was packed, as always.  Always be ready to move out.  It was a rule we lived by.  I dug into it, seeking out the “hidden” pocket that contained my savings.  I confirmed that I still had it.  I counted it.  I put it in the concealed pocket of my jacket.  I gripped the phone harder.

“Ring, damn you.”

It did.

The buzz traveled all the way up my arm in the half second it took me to answer the call.  I didn’t even check the display before I pressed it to my ear.  Other than the lawyer working on my visa, only Duo had this number and, at this precise moment, only Duo would be calling me.

 _“Duo!  Where are you?”_ I heard myself snarl.

A woman cleared her throat delicately.  “Am I speaking with Mr. Trowa Barton?”

“What do you want?”  I was busy.  Duo could be trying to call me even now.

“My name is Sylvia Noventa.  I’m an assistant with Noventa, Darlian, and Une.  I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Dominic Maxwell.  He has requested that I reserve a flight to Vientiane, Laos in your name.”

I blinked.  “What?”  I blinked again, mind racing.  I could think of more than one reason for why Duo would be arranging for me to fly to Laos, and none were pleasant.  Before she could repeat all that, I cut in, “When did you hear from him?”

“Not two minutes ago, sir.”

“I can’t talk to you now,” I informed her.  If Duo was no longer speaking to this woman, then my call might get through.

“I understand your urgency, Mr. Barton, but if you’re intending to contact Mr. Maxwell I doubt you’ll be able to connect.  He’s currently on the line with Mr. Noventa.”

“Fine.  What’s this about a flight?”

“He requests that you join him in Vientiane as soon as possible.”

“Fine,” I repeated, digging into my rucksack for my passport.

“How soon can you be at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos?”

“Two hours,” I answered.  I was unsure if that was manageable, but I’d do it if I had to.  Somehow.

“There’s a flight leaving at 4:40 p.m. local time with transfers at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Bangkok, Thailand.”

“I’ll make it.”  I gave her my passport information, warning her to check that it would clear the airports on the itinerary.

“Expect a return call from me within the next twenty minutes,” she advised and then, amazingly, she volunteered, “Mr. Maxwell has just hung up with Mr. Noventa.”

“Thank you,” I said and cut the connection.  I stood up, selecting Duo’s name from my meager contact list.  I swung my rucksack onto my back as his phone began to ring.

“Trowa!”

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth and just _thanked whatever powers there be_ that he was alive.

“Trowa?”

“I’m here.  What’s your status?  Are you secure?”

“Um…”

That was not encouraging.

“I’m in a cab.  Heading for a big shopping mall.”

“What happened to the airport?  The embassy?”  I tightened my grip on the rucksack strap, trying to strangle my sudden impulse to throttle him.

“I’m not sure if I’ll make it to either of those places, Tro.  They—they took my dad.  Grabbed him off the street right in front of me.”

“Bugger and fuck!” I swore softly.  If they’d dared an abduction in public – in broad daylight – then they would surely be watching the embassy and airport, the most likely places Duo would try to get to next, in an effort to intercept him.

“I’m coming to you, Duo.”  I was already heading out of the barracks we’d set up in the basement of the apartment building.  I’d charged down here from the communal kitchen upstairs, leaving my rice and bredie uneaten when I’d realized what I was seeing in the photos he’d sent.  I took the stairs two at a time, bursting into the kitchen and meeting thirteen pairs of wide eyes.  “Hold on a moment.”

I turned to the captain and assembled my ultimatums and arguments.

He held up a hand before I could even say a word and nodded toward Martins who was standing by the door, jangling a set of keys.  “Go, Trowa.  You call us when you can and give us your status.”

I nodded my thanks and followed Martins out the door and over to the bakkie.

“Right,” I told Duo, mindful of how low his mobile’s battery must be getting.  “The shopping center is a good place to shake anyone tailing you—”  If it was crowded.  “—but make sure you know where the exits are and stay in areas with lots of people.”

“Got it.”

I tossed my rucksack onto the backseat and swung myself into the front as Martins turned the engine over.  “And you’re going to need a place to lay low tonight.”

“I have an idea.”

“Tell me.”

“Charm a couple of college kids who are here for winter break into going clubbing together.”

“Mind the exits and stick to bottled water.  Don’t let your drink out of your sight.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“I’m focusing on making sure you live to see tomorrow.”

He blew out a breath that was nearly an oath.  “I know.  I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.  Never apologize for calling me.”  I didn’t care that Martins was sitting right there, fighting with afternoon traffic for the sake of getting me to the airport in time to catch a flight I wasn’t even sure I could make, listening in while I had an intense and intensely _personal_ conversation with my _maat._

“OK.  I won’t.  I don’t apologize for drinking outta the milk carton, either.”

“I’ve been warned.”

“You bet you have.”

I let out a long breath.  “Duo, you need to conserve your phone’s battery.”

“I know.  I’m gonna shut it off once Sylvia calls me back with your itinerary, then I’ll use it to send you and Marshall – er, Mr. Noventa, I mean – text updates on my location on the hour.”

It was a good plan and I told him so.

He hesitated.

“What?”

“I’m sorry that jar of peanut butter kinda asploded all over the place.”

I laughed.  It sounded a little hysterical.  Martins flinched.  “Bugger all,” I swore when my guffaws had faded into a strangled groan.  “Just be careful.  Change your appearance as much as you can.  New clothes.  Get a hat.”

“I’ll take my hair outta its braid.”

I leaned my head back against the seat.  I could imagine it.  Fuck.  Now was not the time to dwell on petty fantasies.  “Call me if you need me,” I told him.

“Isn’t that what I’m in the process of doing?”

“Ja.  Thank you.”  I did not have the words to thank him for giving me the means to come to his aid.  It would have killed me to stay in Lagos while he was at risk.

“That’s my line.”  He took a deep breath.  “Look, Tro, if the worst happens, I want you to know that I—”

“Shut it,” I snapped.  “The worst is not going to happen.  I will be with you by this time tomorrow come hell or high water.  Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

My fingers tightened around the phone.  I knew I had to hang up but the sound of his voice was the only thing keeping me sane.  “Promise you’ll be careful.  Promise you’ll send updates every hour.”

“I promise, Tro.  You’ll be seeing me soon.”

“I know, Duo.  Now hang up the phone.”

“OK.”  He did.

I leaned my head back against the headrest, still clutching the phone in my hand.  Martins didn’t say a word as he pulled onto the highway and set a new land-speed record for diesel, off-road 4x4s.

Sylvia Noventa called me back about five minutes later and told me my ticket was waiting for me at the airline counter.  I’d be arriving in Vientiane in sixteen hours.  I was flying first class.  I disconnected the call and laughed out loud until tears ran down my face.

Martins just let me get it all out of my system.

“You call for backup if you need it, Trowa,” he told me, setting the parking brake at the international departures passenger drop-off.  The engine chugged and rumbled, drawing looks from the people on the pavement.

I nodded.

He reached into his vest and held out a roll of U.S. bills to me.  The U.S. dollar: it was the currency of choice on the international black market.  “Don’t you hesitate to use this and whatever you need to buy with it.”

I took it and tucked it away.

“Leave your gear,” he reminded me with a glance toward my feet.  I yanked the utility knife from my boot, shoving both it and its sheath into the glove compartment.  I hadn’t been wearing my pistol or hunting knife when my phone had buzzed in my pocket two and a half hours ago.  Two and a half hours ago: when I’d scrolled through Duo’s photos, grinned at the commentary, and grown steadily more and more horrified as the same five men had tracked Duo to each location.  I think I might have cursed.  I knew I’d knocked my chair over when I’d launched myself away from the table and had torn out of the room with the phone already pressed to my ear and Duo’s number dialing.  I’d never done anything like that before and I knew I’d given the guys a skrik, but not one of them had tried to stop me or slow me down.

“Thanks, Martins.”

“Play it safe, kid, and look after your man.”                                                     

I didn’t watch as he drove away.  I had forty minutes to check in, get through security, and make it to my gate.  Even when I was sitting in first class next to a very uncomfortable-looking businessman who was sweating in his designer necktie, my sense of urgency was not appeased.  I itched to check my messages.  I twitched every time the flight attendants came by to attend with their hot towels (“Lemon or lavender scented, sir?”) and drink service (no, I would _not_ like to see the bloody wine menu; just go _away)._   I ate because I needed the calories.  I closed my eyes because the pressurized air in the cabin was drying them out.  I did not sleep.  I couldn’t.

Instead, I checked my wristwatch every five minutes, marking the hour and counting down to the mall closing time in Vientiane, imagining the group of college co-eds Duo had chosen to be his camouflage for the evening.  I pictured him at a disco, a bottle of water dangling from his fingers, his hair long and flowing as he warmed a bankie at the bar, watching the dancers.  Or maybe he was out there on the floor, his sinuous body swaying with the beat, his hips rocking, the lights pulsing over his upturned face and wild tresses.

I took a deep breath and let it out, willing the sudden, sharp spike of arousal to subside.  It dulled a bit, but roared back to life as soon as I relaxed my guard and the image of Duo dancing in that dark and throbbing atmosphere descended upon me again.

Bugger and fuck.  Duo was in serious trouble and I was sitting here getting hard thinking about him.  Worse yet, I was doing it while imagining him doing something he would not find even remotely appealing; there was no way Duo would be up for a swaai what with his father in the hands of men with an unknown agenda.  There was no way he’d throw caution to the wind and dance as if those same men weren’t even now driving through the city streets looking for _him._   His father was missing, taken, being held against his will and before the night was out Duo might be joining them.

_Please, God.  No._

I wanted him here, next to me or in my arms.  I wanted him to be _safe._   I wanted that so badly I could taste it as thick as blood on my tongue.  There was nothing I wouldn’t give to have him so close his heat burned me like it had that night in Egypt _._   There was nothing I wouldn’t do to be able to press my lips to his skin, to inhale his scent, to have his hair wrapped around my fingers… but imagining all that only led me to twist the moment into a dance of a different kind: a dance of hungry mouths clashing together, breath-to-breath, and frantic hands pushing clothing roughly aside until we were skin-to-skin.  Out of desperation, I turned on my personal video unit and watched the most idiotic sitcom I could find.  The canned laughter and forced lines distracted me from my hormone-driven thoughts until I was nauseous over the banality of pop culture.

Thankfully, I had to run to get through Ethiopian immigration and check in for my next flight aboard Bangkok Airways.  I was exhausted and breathless when I buckled myself into the next first class seat I’d been assigned.  I had a window this time and no neighbor to ignore.

There was just enough time before takeoff for me to check my messages and I slumped into my seat with relief at the sight of five updates, one for every hour I’d been forced to keep my mobile shut off.  I texted him back with my progress, ignoring the flight attendant’s increasingly insistent reprimands until I’d finished the message.

Then we were airborne again.  I leaned my head against the window, staring at the coming darkness beyond, sighing, hoping, _praying…_

I jerked awake at the feel of the landing gear connecting with tarmac.  Blinking at the weak light of dawn through the window, I checked my wristwatch and factored in the time difference.  I was almost there.

I gathered up my passport and landing permission card for a second time, checked my messages again while I waited in line for my turn through immigration, and found myself with nine additional updates from Duo.  He was still all right.

Relief had never tasted sweeter.

And I only had a two-hour layover plus a one-hour flight to endure before I reached him.  I stopped at the money exchange and then I hunted up the airport shower rooms and got cleaned up.  I gulped down two large, overpriced and over-brewed cups of coffee and paced in front of the gate until boarding was called.

Finally, I found myself in a cramped, vinyl-covered seat.  The plane to Vientiane was small, little more than a puddle-jumper, so first class was a ridiculous distinction on a craft of these dimensions.  I was thankful for the lack of food in my stomach when the plane hit turbulence and then the pilot made the executive decision to cut the engine every two minutes for twenty seconds at a time to save fuel during landing.

I staggered off the plane and forced down some water to settle my stomach while I waited for the luggage carrousel to either deliver my rucksack or not.  Somehow, the bloody thing had managed to follow me here despite my late arrival in Lagos and immediately connecting flight at Addis Ababa.  I checked my messages constantly.  The most recent text from Duo warned that his mobile’s battery was dying but that he was safe in a place with lots of people, a shopping center where he was determinedly striving for anonymity after a night out clubbing with some French university students who’d come to the city on holiday.

I took a taxicab there, paid the driver, and leaped out of the car before the wheels had come to a complete halt.  I had to forcibly restrain myself from running through the building to get to the food court on the second level.  Clutching the strap of my rucksack, wishing I’d been able to bring my knives with me, planning which weapons to purchase now that I was here, wondering if Duo was going to recognize me (all right, it was a given that he would; I suppose what I was really anxious about was what sort of reception to expect), I scanned the sea of plastic seats and Formica tables… until I spotted a lone figure slumped over a counter by the glass windows overlooking the main entrance.

From a distance, it was easy to discount the lithe form as female what with the curtain of long hair rippling down over his shoulders and arms, past his hips.  Seeing him with it undone was several hundred times better than the pale imitation that my mind had supplied.  It also amazed me that he hadn’t been cornered and caught yet.  That hair made him _more_ noticeable, not less.  I should have recommended that he tuck his braid into the collar of his jacket instead.

I approached him from the side slowly.  The closer I got, the better able I was to see his expression.  There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.  His skin had a greyish cast from lack of sleep.  No, Duo had not danced last night.  He’d probably sat in a shadowy corner, clutching his bottled water as he tried not to sob out every wave of helplessness, loss, and terror.

“Is this seat taken?” I asked from little more than an arm’s length away.

“Hm?  Yeah,” he mumbled, blinking slowly, “’m waitin’ f’r someone.”

I grinned with relief even as I was saddened by his pallor and exhaustion.  He was at the end of his strength.  “Would his name be ‘Trowa’ by any chance?”

He stiffened and snapped to attention, his tired eyes widening as he turned toward me.  My rucksack slid from my shoulder and onto the floor.  He nearly overturned the bankie in his haste to stand.

“Oh, shit,” he moaned softly, closing his eyes against what I guessed was a wave of dizziness.

“Shh,” I shushed him, stepping forward and placing my hands on his shoulders to steady him… and he leaned into my grasp trustingly, so trustingly.  For a moment, I wondered if the past three years had really happened at all.  For a moment, I thought I was back in Egypt, crouching under a sail in an earthen stairwell between life above and death below.

“You’re here,” he murmured against my shoulder.

I wrapped my arms around his trembling form, holding him upright.  “I’m here.  Point me in the direction of this dastardly peanut butter jar.”

He wheezed out a laugh against my jacket.  “Too tired to point,” he muttered.  “I’m sorry, Tro.”

“Shh,” I soothed again, rubbing his back and continuing to scan the food court for familiar faces.

He continued as if I hadn’t made a sound, “I had this great reunion moment all planned out: the whole running across the field of wild flowers in slow motion thing.”

“You did not,” I accused, grinning.

“Well, OK, I didn’t.  But there was gonna be kissing.  Lots of it.  And look – I’ve screwed it up.  Can’t remember when I last brushed my teeth.  My mouth is furry, moldy, eugh.  I gross myself out.”

I bit down on my laughter and pressed my lips to his temple.  “C’mon.  Let’s find you a toothbrush and a bed.”

“Hm’K.”

I picked up his backpack and helped him thread his arms through the straps then I swung my own pack over my shoulder.  I found us another car and a hotel with a functioning fire escape and several nearby hiding places.  I sat Duo on the closed toilet in the bathroom of our room and curled his fingers around a toothpaste-bearing toothbrush.  I stood by with a cup of water (from a bottle, not from the tap) so he could rinse and I gathered his hair away from his face while he spat in the sink.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

He shook his head and collapsed face-down on the bed.  I took the liberty of removing his white canvas and rubber-soled takkies.  Even before I started unlacing the second one, he was out like a light.  Eying the mass of hair that was probably going to strangle him if he rolled over in his sleep, I set about braiding it for him, using the drawstring I pulled from my jacket collar to tie off the end.

I went through his windbreaker pockets and found his mobile phone.  As it was the same model as mine, I plugged it in to recharge with my cord and adapter kit.  My phone’s battery was also getting low, but his was a higher priority and it didn’t feel right digging through his backpack without his permission for it.  I called the captain in order to let him and the others know I’d arrived and acquired Duo.  That accomplished, I debated what should come next.  Rest, probably.  When he woke up, Duo was going to want to get started on looking for his father.

That wasn’t what he _ought_ to be doing, of course.  He ought to be booking a seat on a flight home and figuring out a strategy for getting himself to the airport without being intercepted.  I sighed as I imagined that oncoming argument.

Perhaps it was pure selfishness, or perhaps I sensed it was a tactical advantage…  Regardless of the motivation, I lay down next to Duo on the warped double bed instead of isolating myself on the room’s second battered mattress and threadbare quilt.

I didn’t try to touch him.  I just lay on my back and rolled my head to the side so I could watch him sleep.  He’d gotten taller in the past three years, as tall as I was.  His shoulders were broader than when I’d last seen him; his arms were longer and well-muscled; his face had thinned.  His lips still looked kissably soft and I could count a number of pale freckles on his nose.  I dropped my gaze to his hand which was lying between us on the bed.  I remembered how he’d played with my hair that night in Egypt, how he’d gripped my shoulder, cupped my chin, curled his fingers into the back of my jacket when we’d embraced for the last time.

I lay beside him, comparing my memory and the reality.  His slow steady breaths mesmerized me, beckoned me.  Given the circumstances, I knew I shouldn’t want him, but I did.  Sighing, I shut my eyes, seeking a moment’s respite from the relentless desire.

I opened my eyes when the mattress dipped.  It was dark in the room – night had fallen – and there was only the orangey glow of the weak nightlight to see by.

“Sorry,” Duo mouthed, breath minty fresh again.  I tracked his movements as he crawled back onto the bed and lay down on his side, facing me.  I listened to the final gurgle of the toilet bowl refilling and then the only sounds were of his quiet breathing and the intermittent traffic on the street three stories below our room.

“I switched our phones.  Yours is charging.”  He spoke quietly, as if whispers didn’t count as waking moments.

I reached out an open hand to him, palm-up, upon the rumpled quilt.  I was hoping he’d give me his.  Instead, he scooted his entire body closer until his head was resting on my outstretched arm and his hands were curled up between our chests.  I leaned forward and inhaled the scent off his skin.  God how I’d missed him.  I was not going to be able to go another three years without seeing him again.

The movement pressed his knuckles against the center of my chest and his hands shifted, turning so that his fingers could trace the outline of the pendant I still wore beneath my shirt.

He didn’t say anything.  He just looked into my eyes as his fingertips danced over the necklace, occasionally brushing against my skin through the fabric of my long-sleeved undershirt.

“Duo,” I warned him, shuddering at the delicate touches.

“I think this is the part where we kiss,” he confided on a breath.

It killed me to do it, but I had to roll away from him and sit up on the edge of the bed.  “No, this is the part where we’re smart,” I replied.  “The kissing comes later.”  I tacked that on so he’d understand that I wasn’t refusing out of lack of desire but out of a sense of duty.

“I’m not going to like this smart business, am I?” he guessed in a droll tone.

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, let’s have it then.”  He rolled onto his back, waving a hand in invitation for me to give it my best try.  “Spit it out so I can convince you to do things my way and we can get on with mayhem and rescue and heroes’ rewards and all that.”

I grinned at him over my shoulder.  “That’s a busy schedule.”

“Making up for lost time.”

His eyes twinkled at me in the low light and I almost caved.  Almost.  I sighed.  “Duo, you need to get out of the country.  Go home and hire a kidnap and ransom expert to get your father back.  You staying here…”  I shook my head.  “It’s only going to make things worse for your father.”

It was his turn to sigh now.  He slid up next to me, lying on his stomach and bracing himself up on his elbows.  “There hasn’t been a ransom demand.  I just checked with Marshall Noventa.”

I glanced at my wristwatch.  More than twenty-four hours had passed since Lord Maxwell’s abduction.  If the kidnappers were in it for the money, then contact would have been made by now.

Duo continued, “He’s contacted the local police here, but there’s not much they can do except keep an eye out for my dad and the guys in my photos.”

Translation: _if you ever see your father alive again, it won’t be because we found him for you._   Bugger.  I ran a hand through my hair.  Without a ransom demand or the aid of local law enforcement, we were well and truly on our own and starting from square one.  Lord Maxwell was as lost now as he had been the minute he’d been forced into his abductors’ vehicle.

Duo seemed to agree with my silent assessment.  “Besides, it’s not money they want.  They went through our stuff while we were out, looking for something.”

“Any idea what?”

“Maybe.  They didn’t take anything, so it must have been something we had with us while we were wandering around the city.”

I waited for him to elaborate.  From his tone and the hunched quality of his shoulders, I knew he knew what it was.

He made an exasperated sound and hung his head.  “My mom was obsessed with this crazy myth before she and Solo died.  Dad brought me here to try to finish her quest.”  He lifted his hands and made the double quotes gesture, mocking the last word.  Then he dropped his head and pressed the heel of each hand to his eyes; he didn’t have the energy to mock anything or anyone for any appreciable length of time.  “I’ve got all her notes and stuff in my bag,” he mumbled.  “That must be what they wanted.  And, not finding it, they took my dad.  They’re probably gonna make him tell them what she wrote about and after he does – after they either find or don’t find what they’re lookin’ for – they’ll…”  Duo took a shuddering breath.  “He won’t be very useful to them, will he?”

“Duo.”  I turned toward him, bumping his forearm with my knee.  “What was your mother looking for?”

“Long story short?  She was looking for a kind of ancient portal that was hiding a weapon, something that was unbeatable.  She was gonna destroy it, or at least make it so no one could ever open the gateway and get to it.”

I rubbed a hand over my face, ignoring the beard stubble on my jaw.  “Fuck,” I remarked quietly.

Duo blinked up at me, frowning.  “You’re not gonna tell me you actually believe this crap, are you?”

“No, but if that’s what these people want, then _they_ believe it, and they’ve kidnapped a man to get it.  That tells us how high a value they’ve placed on acquiring it.”  I didn’t like it, but Duo’s assessment of his father’s usefulness was sounding more and more accurate.  It didn’t help that all this had happened in a part of the world where the value of a single human life was oftentimes pathetically minuscule.

I didn’t say anything in reply to Duo’s dread-filled silence.  I didn’t have an argument to offer or additional support to add.  I felt his gaze on me as I headed for the bathroom to take care of my own sticky mouth and full bladder.  When I returned, I left the bathroom light on and the door open.  Duo was standing next to the room’s single window, his arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder and the side of his head pressed against the scuffed wall.  The sun-rotted curtains were still shut but he was staring out at the darkness through a one-centimeter break between the edge of the fabric and the window frame.  I checked the time.  It was after midnight.

“We should try to sleep a little more,” I recommended, hesitating at the foot of the bed.

“Can’t,” he breathed.

I re-sorted our priorities.  “Then let’s talk about what comes next.”

“I’m not leaving without my dad and I’m not going to sit around while other people go out and look for him.”  The look he sent my way told me wasn’t referring to the police.  It also told me he would not be budged from this resolution.

I’d expected no less.  I could insist on fighting him.  I could tie him up and deliver him to the airport.  I could even buckle him into a first class seat back to New York, but he’d find a way off the plane and back onto the streets of Vientiane where he’d not only be an open target but even more determined to go through with some bosbefok rescue operation on his own.  I couldn’t let him do that.  Damaging his trust in me would only make things worse at this point.

“Tell me what happened,” I coaxed, leaning back against the single chest of dinged up drawers which also held a small analog television and a lamp.  “Start with your arrival at the airport.  Was anyone watching you there?”

He shook his head.  “I didn’t notice.  Maybe.”

I stayed silent as he organized his thoughts and then gave me a report on his first day in the city.  It wasn’t until he got to the actual abduction part of the events that he began to be affected.  He scowled.  He spoke through gritted teeth.  His fingers dug into his own crossed arms.  I ached for him, but I needed to hear it all without interruptions or distractions.

“Then the college kid – dark, messy hair and blue eyes, I think he mighta been Japanese because he cussed in Japanese – pulls up on this motorbike and tells me to get on.  I recognized him from earlier so I wasn’t sure if he was with them or had his own agenda, y’know?  Anyway, he pulled out a gun and aimed it at the guys from the Jeep and I…”  He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and rasped in a disgusted whisper, “I ran.  I fucking _ran away.”_

I pushed myself away from the furniture I was holding in place and approached him.

“And I fucking _watched_ from the backseat of the taxi.  I watched them force my dad into their Jeep and I didn’t do _anything!”_

Slowly, I reached out and put my hand on his arm.  When he didn’t flinch away or shrug me off, I reaffirmed my grip and pulled him toward me, wrapping my arms around him.  He was quivering with rage.  His short fingernails were close to puncturing the skin of his own arms.  I reached up and gently guided his head to my shoulder.

“Scream if you want to, Duo.”  He shook his head.  I insisted, “Then cry or curse or hit me.”  He could donner me black and blue if it would just ease some of the guilt and anguish.

He shook his head again.  His refusal to deal with his own guilt and rage was going to be a hindrance once the sun came up and the next step was ready and waiting to be taken.

With a monumental effort, he took a deep breath and I felt him center himself, felt the muscles beneath my hands shed a measure of tension as he locked all the pain away deep inside where it was going to fester until something triggered it and caused an explosion.

“Duo, please,” I all but begged.

“I’m fine.”  He tried to take a step back.  I tightened my arms around him.

He looked up, frowning with confusion, his lips parted with a question.

I interrupted him.  “This is the part where we kiss,” I informed him and leaned in to press my mouth to his.  For a moment, he stood frozen, letting me gracelessly mash our lips together.  And then he jerked in my embrace, angled his head to the side and opened to me.

_Oh God._

My brain liquefied at the feel of his tongue – hot, wet, supple – surging past my lips.  How had I survived the past three years without this?  Without him?

His arms unlocked from the knotted barrier between our chests and then his hands were gripping the back of my waistband, pulling my hips forward to meet his in a rough, almost punishing rub that made me gasp.  He groaned in reply, pulling back from my lips just enough to entice me to follow him.  I did, stretching forward to brush my lips against his once, twice, three times—

“Trowa,” he moaned pleadingly.

I licked and nibbled at his lips, remembering what he’d taught me once upon a night in Egypt, using breath and beard stubble to relearn him.  My fingers slid into his hair, holding his head at the angle I preferred as I teased him again and again like he’d teased me time after time: every text message, every syllable that had tumbled off his tongue long-distance, each photo of himself – few and far between – that he’d sent me, every smile I couldn’t touch, couldn’t see blossom with my own eyes…  I was done with this teasing, with the half-life we were living.  I now took my revenge on fate and it was so very sweet, hot, spicy, _him._

He clawed at my shirt, his nails dragging across my lower back and making me shudder.  His hips rubbed against mine in helpless, mindless, instinctive thrusts, and I could feel him hardening.  I was aching for him, for this, for more.  I kissed him deeply, loving his flavor, awed that he permitted me the taste of him at all.

His hands fought their way beneath my shirt and I shouted into his mouth at the first touch of soft fingertips upon tender skin.  I pulled back, tilting my chin up and gritting my teeth at the ceiling, heart pounding.  It was too much but I couldn’t bring myself to let him go, to take a step back and try to calm myself.

That half-formed intention was obliterated by the feel of Duo’s breath on my throat, his lips dragging up the line of my pulse.  I pulled him closer – _“Uhnn, Duo…”_ – and tilted my head to allow him full range.  He nuzzled and kissed his way up to my ear and then under my chin, pulling my hips against his forcefully in a grinding rhythm and I thought about the disco, the dance floor.  Duo was dancing with me.  With _me._

And then I felt one hand retreat from my lower back and reach between our hard lengths.  I gasped, choked on my next breath and just tried to process the fact that Duo was fumbling with the fastenings of his denims.

_Oh God._

I stumbled back, pulling him with me; marveling at his heavy-lidded gaze, his eyes so dark with lust; panting at the sight of his wet, full lips; flushing from the pit of my stomach outward in a hot, relentless wave at the glimpse of his pale fingers yanking open the buttons on his fly.  I tugged him toward the bed and we tumbled down on our sides, facing each other.  I scrambled for his hands, grasping his wrists and stilling his movements.

“Let me,” I implored.

His fingers twitched.  His hips rolled invitingly.  He groaned.  He pulled his hands away from himself, trusting me.

I rose over him, one knee sliding between his as I nudged him onto his back.  Bracing myself up on one arm, I placed my open palm below the small indentation at the base of his throat and between his collarbones.  His pulse shuddered wildly beneath the pad of my ring finger.  I watched him watching me, both of us panting, and then I ran my hand slowly down his chest, brushing a stiff nipple through the fabric of his T-shirt and relishing his startled gasp.  I pressed my palm to his taut belly and lower.  He arched mindlessly with a mouth-wateringly supple movement of his spine.  I forced myself to move slowly, deliberately tending to the remaining buttons on his pants, counting the tiny, impatient noises he was making.

His hands, which had been roaming up my arms and around my shoulders, tightened as he rolled his hips again, seeking my touch.  _Mine._

I was so close to feeling him through the thin fabric of his shorts, but I held off for one moment more.  “Duo,” I breathed, leaning down and kissing him hungrily, grasping his hip through the loosened denims as he writhed.  He whined.  His grip was bruisingly tight as he urged me closer.  I finished the kiss with a gentle caress of my tongue that made him shiver and made my entire body throb.

“Look at me,” I demanded.

He opened his eyes and stared into mine.  I slid my hand inside his denims and—

_“Ahh!  Trowa…!”_

—he was so hard against my palm.  His entire body arched up into mine, his jaw clenched.  My fingers delved deeper, finding a wet patch in the fabric of his shorts near the head.  I groaned, suddenly aware of how damp my own pants were becoming.

“Duo…” I pleaded, sitting up stiffly and tugging one of his hands from behind my neck and down to the front of my cargo pants.

He rocked his hips up against my hand as he just about tore the button from the hole and worked the zipper down.  He had to readjust the angle of his arm as his fingers disappeared inside the fabric and then—

“Nuuh!”  How many times had I imagined this?  Tormented myself with it?  I removed my hand from him long enough to claw and tug his denims and pants midway down his thighs, peripherally aware of him doing the same to me.  And then he was bare and sweaty, leaking and flushed in my grasp.  My knee slid back between his and I whimpered as his fingers closed around my naked flesh.  I rocked down against him as he rolled up against me.  I panted, begged wordlessly for him to never let me go.  My free hand was buried in his hair and his was sliding up my back on top of my shirt.

My _shirt._   Bugger all, we were still wearing our shirts, our underwear and pants, our bloody socks.  This was not how I’d wanted-dreamed-prayed our first time would go, but it was too late now.

“Coming…” I rasped into his ear, nipping the lobe.  “Coming, Duo.”

He groaned, the tone somehow appreciative and encouraging.  And then his breath hitched and he was swelling in my grasp.  I was ahead of him in the race for release, pumping against his grasping fingers, and the heat that had been gradually coalescing at the base of my spine surged outward with sudden brilliance.

I closed my eyes against it as it rode me, wrung me out, tossed me aside.  I panted against Duo’s shoulder, struggling to breathe, to not be a useless collection of skin and muscle and bone.

“Trowa…?” Duo coaxed me, thrusting into my loosened grasp, reminding me of how close he was.  I tightened my fingers around him, forced open my heavy eyelids so I could watch him as he thrust up again and again, his spine bowing, drawing tighter with each motion, his fingers digging into my shoulders through the fabric of my shirt, lifting himself off the mattress.

“Oh, fuck!” he hissed, and then he came.  I gave him a moment to recover before I tunneled an arm beneath him and rolled him toward me, hooking a heel behind his bent knee.  Our hands were sticky and our clothes splattered and smeared and even soaked in places, but I didn’t care.  How could I care about anything when Duo purred and nuzzled his face into my neck, when he sighed contentedly against my skin?

I wanted to tell him I loved him, but this was not the time or the place.  What we had just done didn’t warrant that kind of sentiment.  What we’d done hadn’t been done out of love, but out of fear, stress, and three years of uncertainty and ever-present aching.  I was never going to regret a single moment in Duo’s presence, a single second of time that he gave me, but I regretted that we’d come together like this.  I’d wanted more for him, for us.

 _Later,_ I consoled myself, snuggling against him, ignoring the wetness cooling on my skin.  Later, when Duo’s father was safe, I’d tell him.  Later, when it would mean what it was supposed to mean, I’d offer my confession.

“Hey, Tro?” Duo murmured, rubbing his cheek against my shoulder, snagging the mass-produced, knit weave on his beard stubble.

“Hm?”

“Are you still gonna respect me in the morning if I drool on you?”

I laughed.  What was it about him that made smiles and laughter come so naturally to me?  “You’re wondering about that _now?”_ I asked, making a show of wiping my gooey hand – the one that had seen all the action – across the front of my soiled shirt.  I swear I heard him giggle.

“Just checking.”

But while we were on the subject, I reached over to the nightstand between the beds and put the complementary tissues to good use.  All my shifting around eventually roused Duo and while he was changing clothes, I did likewise, daring to peek at his broad, bare back and long, toned legs.  So much pale and perfect skin.  I made myself turn away before he could catch me looking.

It went against habits that had been ingrained in me since childhood, but I left my clothes on the soggy bed to be dealt with later.

Duo dressed in a clean T-shirt (it had an illustration of some kind of furry, green monster peeking out of a steel rubbish bin on it and the catch phrase read “I grouch you!”) and a pair of too-big, knee-length plaid shorts.  When he crawled onto the other bed, I followed.  I would follow him anywhere.  The thought wasn’t nearly as shocking as it probably should have been.  It was still completely befok, of course.  There was no avoiding that, so I just accepted it.

“Trowa?” he whispered after he’d settled down, one leg thrown over mine and his hand on my belly.

“Duo?” I returned, closing my eyes.  I was tired.  If he wasn’t tired, he was some kind of a mutant alien from space in the sexiest body I’d ever seen.

He hesitated for a long moment and I almost dropped off right then.  “Thanks,” he finally said.

I frowned.  I had no intention of accepting his thanks for being his friend, for always answering his calls and reading his goofy text messages, for identifying the men who’d been following him, for warning him, for getting on not one but three planes for him, for being here when he’d needed me, for falling in love with him, for—

“For being my first.”  His voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear him at all.

My eyes snapped open.  I felt my lips stretch into a ridiculously wide grin which I aimed up at the ceiling.  My hand sought his, interlacing our fingers.  “That’s my line,” I objected in an uneven tone.

He tensed briefly and then relaxed completely against me.  “Hm,” he replied, pressing his lips to my cloth-covered shoulder, marking out his soon-to-be drool territory, maybe.  “I guess we’ll have to share.”

“Ja.”  I liked the sound of that.  I closed my eyes again and slept.

And I woke to the curiously intense sensation of starving to death.  “Eish!” I complained as my empty stomach cramped so hard I thought it was going to fold in on itself.  It then rumbled so loudly I was sure that the like hadn’t been heard since Krakatoa.

Duo shifted next to me.  “I hear ya, man.”

I looked over at him, noticing his bright, humor-filled eyes and his casual pose, lying on his side with his head propped up in one hand.  My lips twitched in appreciation for the joke. 

“Jet lag’s a bitch.”  He rolled away for a moment and groped for something on the nightstand.  I glimpsed a pair of empty food wrappers on the tabletop along with whatever he was reaching for.  A moment later, two energy bars in shiny, retail wrappers bounced onto the bed next to me.  He watched me as I ate, keeping his hands to himself.

“I won’t bite,” I told him as I finished off the first.

“Hah!  Right.  I don’t make a habit of feeding _and_ petting the wildlife at the same time.  Guys have been known to lose an arm that way.”

I arched a brow at him as I reached for the second offering and made a concentrated effort to consume it at a slower pace.  “Wildlife?”

He grinned.  “Yeah.  You and domestication… I just can’t see that happening.”

Maybe he was right.  I wondered what that was going to mean for the future; someday he’d go back to his life and, when that happened, what would I do?  Would I be happy following him into that tame, civilized world?  Did I have a place in it?  I didn’t know, but when I looked into his eyes, my worries evaporated into vapor.  I’d suss it out.  Duo would be there and I knew I could count on him.

I smirked.  “I guess you’ll just have to find a way to keep me from chewing on the furniture.”

He laughed and finally reached out to me, brushing some crumbs from my two-day’s worth of beard.  I turned toward his hand and nuzzled his palm.  “I’m serious,” I told him, meeting his gaze.  “You’ve fed me.  I’m following you home.”

I held still while his fingers moved to my bangs and gently brushed them aside.  His smile was gentle and a little sad.  “It’s about damn time.”

“Been waiting long?”

We shared a look between us and I saw it happen, I saw the man Duo was meant to be step forward.  I was witness to his determination; he would not be cowed by his youth and inexperience any longer.  He wouldn’t let me go back to the troupe easily.  He was prepared to fight for me, to defy the expectations and norms of his world.  I reached for him, cradled his jaw in my hand.  I brushed my thumb over his lips, wordlessly urging him not to throw caution to the wind in reckless abandon even as I invited him to take his best shot.

He shook his head back and forth, rubbing his mouth against the pad of my thumb.  “So, we need a plan.”

I let my hand drop and checked my wristwatch as I popped the last bit of sustenance in my mouth.  It was bloody early, but the local street markets would be opening soon.

“The plan,” I warned him, “will depend on how many people are still tailing you.  You said you went to the park permit office on your first day?”

He nodded.  “I was supposed to go pick up my pass yesterday around lunchtime.  Obviously, I didn’t.”

“Right.”  That was one place we’d likely find someone on the lookout for him.  I wasn’t sure if capture and interrogation was an option.  I didn’t speak the local language and I doubted Duo was fluent enough to make it worth the risk, but perhaps we could follow the lookout back to wherever they were keeping his father.  “First, we need provisions.  Can you use a knife?”

“Uh, I’m guessin’ you’re not talking about peeling potatoes?”

My lips twitched.  With a nod, I said, “Second point: show you how to use a knife to defend yourself.”

“Ooh, fun,” he responded.  His grin was fake and his eyes shadowed.

I reached for his hand and gripped it tightly.  I didn’t want to put him in a situation where he might have to fight hand-to-hand, but he’d already refused the only other options.  Still, I offered a second time, “We could still go to the local police and put the fear of God into them.  Then I could take you to the airport.”

“And you’d do what?  Go after my dad on your own?”  His anticipation of my next offer startled me.  He shook his head vehemently.  “No.  No way, Tro.  That’s not why I called you.  You’re not a merc to me.”

I bit my lip as something swelled to the point of near-explosion deep in my chest.  There weren’t many people in the whole world who saw me as something other than a fighter, a knife hand in the dark and a gunman on the roof.

I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet this morning and I doubted he had, either, but I didn’t care.  I closed the distance between us in a sudden lunge and pulled him against me, our mouths crashing together hotly.  In the next instant, his arms were around my shoulders and one leg was hooked over my waist.  Oh God, he was flexible.

We kissed like it was the sum total of the universe.  I didn’t want to stop – I didn’t _ever_ want to stop – but I was getting hard and we didn’t have time for this.  We were both fed, rested, and there was a life at stake.  It was time to move out.

I started to pull away and he mirrored me, sighing.  “OK.  Knives.  Combat lessons.  Count the stalkers.  Does that about cover it?”

“Ja,” I said.

“And after that we head for the temple.”

“What?”

Duo frowned.  “Well, if those guys are after the key thing that either is or isn’t hidden inside, then that’s where we’ll find my dad, right?”

I nodded.  I didn’t mention the fact that they might not take Lord Maxwell with them at all; they might have cell or satellite phones; they might simply call their accomplices here in the city to report their success and order the disposal of the prisoner.  If that happened, Duo and I were going to be too far away to cobble together a last-minute rescue.  What’s more, we’d be outnumbered, isolated, and without leverage.  In short: powerless to negotiate.  And I was saying nothing of the additional possibility that Lord Maxwell’s abduction had nothing to do with this mythical weapon at all, but I had no intention of letting Duo see my doubts.

So, when he summed up with “OK.  That’s the plan,” I just nodded a second time.

He continued, “You’re gonna need a park permit, expedited with a little green grease—”  He pulled a roll of Lao paper money out of his pocket.  “—and we’re gonna need a vehicle.  Maybe a guide.  A map.”

“Right.  Let’s get started,” I said, rolling off the bed and offering my hand to him.  He took it.  I pulled him to his feet.  “Give me an hour,” I said as I switched my drawstring sleep trousers for my last pair of clean cargo pants.

“What?  You’re going out alone?”

I met his startled, offended gaze.  “No one’s looking for _me.”_

His jaw clenched in objection.

“Duo,” I argued further, tucking in my shirt, “I’ve got to get weapons for us and show you how to use them.  After that, I _promise,_ where I go, you’ll go.”

He blew out a breath.  It was the closest thing to an agreement I knew I was going to get.  He reached for my mobile and unplugged it from the charger.  “Here.”  He handed it to me.  Our fingers brushed when I took it.  He swallowed thickly.  “If someone comes and I’ve gotta move, I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

I nodded tightly.  Glancing toward the window, I said, “Take the fire escape up to the floor above, kick in a window and try to lay low somewhere inside the hotel.  They’ll be more likely to think you’re heading for the roof or ground floor exits.  It’ll give you time to hide and make them start wondering if you’ve already slipped past them.”

“OK.  Got it.”

I turned toward the door and paused, glancing at his backpack.  It was good quality, distinctive.  “I’ll buy you a rucksack.  This thing stands out like your braid.”

At my mention of it, he reached for the end of his messily bound hair, blinking at the tie I’d used on it, clearly noticing it for the first time.  Before he could work out that I was the culprit, I put a hand on his arm to draw his attention.  “Just tuck it down the back of your shirt.”

He nodded and then, with a quick motion, his hand was gripping mine, lifting my fingers to his lips.  “Watch your back.”

“Always.”  I shifted his grip and squeezed his fingers tightly.  “Call me if you need me.  Lock the door after me.”

Just when I would have slipped into the hall, he grabbed my left arm and turned my wrist over so he could see the time.  Squinting at the digital screen on my sports watch, he mused with exaggerated sobriety, “One hour, Major Trowa.  Operation commencing in five… four… three…”

God he was such a goof.  The moment of levity pushed aside enough tension for me to jokingly offer, “Any requests while I’m out?”

“Don’t talk to strangers?” he dared cheekily.  “Do not pass Go – do not collect two hundred dollars?”

I backed him up against the wall and kissed him.  Deeply.  I kissed him like he was an item on the menu.  Which reminded me…

“When I get back, I’m going to enjoy mocking first class service to you.”

 _“With_ me,” he corrected, grinning.  “You’re not the only one who thinks it’s a total spank show.”

Chuckling, I opened the door, checked the corridor, and stepped into the hall.  He locked the door behind me.  I headed down to the stairwell and out onto the street.  It was still early but, with any luck, the local market would not only be open but full-to-bursting with customers at this hour.

It was.  I selected an unremarkable, canvas rucksack for Duo, and then I bargained for two hunting knives and two utility knives, complete with sheaths.  I bought two leather belts and a collection of fruit, some fried pastries, half a dozen soft, bamboo tubes of sticky rice, and strips of cured meat of some sort.  Everything got tucked into Duo’s new bag.  Good enough; my hour was almost up.

Unfortunately, no one had told the brown-haired, blue-eyed college student wandering through the market in my wake that I was on a schedule.  I’d seen him at the food court yesterday, but hadn’t wanted to make an issue of it.  He’d kept his distance and he hadn’t followed us out to the line of taxicabs.  How he’d managed to find us here I could only guess; he must have gotten the car number and tracked down the driver to ask where he’d dropped us off.  Then he’d waited for one of us to step outside.

I wished for a gun in my hand, but that wasn’t going to happen here, in a roadside neighborhood market.  I refrained from checking my watch.  I paused as if to contemplate an array of loose-leaf teas in woven baskets.  The vendor was haggling with a very vocal customer, so I went unnoticed.  Of course, it helped that I was very good at being unnoticeable.

I took the chance to slip one of the utility knives from its sheath and tuck it up into the knit cuff of my turtleneck sleeve.  And then I waited.  When the college kid was inevitably drawn past me by the crush of the thickening crowd, I fell into step with him and, behind the cover of the rucksack, I pressed the point of the knife into his lower back.

“Your wallet.  Now,” I said conversationally.

“Back pocket.  Right side,” he answered calmly.  Too calmly.

I steered him over to a fruit stand.  “When you buy something here, incidentally show me your passport photo page.”

Due to the crowd, no one paid two market-goers standing so closely together any mind.  The oke did as he was told, pulling his wallet out of his back, _left_ pocket and flashing his ID in my line of sight as he bought a papaya.

“Heero Yuy,” I drawled as I guided him back into the crowd.  “Go back to Japan.  I will not warn you a second time.”

I had my eye on a break in the stalls through which I’d be able to slip away.  Just a few more steps…

“You and Maxwell will need help if you’re planning to go up against Khushrenada.”

“Are you offering?” I asked conversationally.

By way of answer, he casually slung the plastic shopping bag with the papaya he’d bought over his shoulder.  “Details are inside.  Enjoy the local fruit.”

When he released the plastic bag, I caught it and then took my exit.  Yuy let the crowd continue to push him along through the market.  I paused long enough to deftly pluck the torn sheet of notebook paper from inside the bag and drop the papaya on a pile of cheaply made, colorful shirts piled against the back wall of a clothing vendor.

I took a circuitous route back to the hotel, entering via the service entrance and taking the stairs up to our room.  I knocked and spoke through the door, slipping inside and turning the bolt behind me when Duo opened it.

“You’re almost late,” he grouched, and the look on his face matched that of the grumpy, green monster on his T-shirt.  I had to turn away to hide my smile.

“Here,” I said, handing him a belt and a pair of knives.  I showed him how to cut two parallel slits in the flat side of the hunting knife sheath for belt loops.  We both suited up in silence and he copied me, positioning the hunting knife along the belt at the back of his waist with the handle within reach of his dominant hand. 

The utility knife sheath was too narrow for the same treatment, so I had him hold up his shirt while I positioned the sheathed knife along the strip of leather and, using some Bostik, glued it in place just to the left of the belt buckle.  I dared to brush my fingers over his bare side and I let my bangs drag across his pale belly before I stood and nudged him toward the bag of pastries, bananas, apples, and Asian pears.

I pretended I didn’t see the hot look he gave me in reply.  The meat and rice-filled bamboo sticks I divided into two rations and tucked them away in our rucksacks for later.

“You see anyone familiar?” Duo asked as he polished an apple on his shirt sleeve.

Before I answered that, I selected a fried ball of what was probably some kind of donut and grinned as the memory of Duo’s “dirt donuts” from Egypt tickled the edge of my thoughts.  I took a hap as I pulled Yuy’s note out of my pocket and offered it to Duo for his inspection.  “Met your fan from Japan,” I told him, shaking open the bit of paper.

“No shit?”  He frowned at the date, time, and location listed in stilted, too-perfect, classroom-taught-and-drilled handwriting.  “Does he have a name?”

“Heero Yuy.”

“You trust him?”

“I chucked his papaya.”

Duo laughed.  “OK, I guess that answers that.  So what does he want?”

“Khushrenada’s head on a pike?”

“A _what’s_ head?”

I offered the second half of my donut to Duo, pulled out my mobile, and did a Google search.  He leaned against the drawers next to me, his shoulder bumping mine.  Alternating between bites of apple and donut, he peered at my phone’s display.  I hit the option for image search results first.  A variety of newspaper and publicity photos answered my query.

“Shit!  _That guy?!”_

I looked up sharply.  “You’ve seen him before?”

“Yeah.  On the plane.  He had the seat right behind mine.”  Duo tilted his head back and cursed at the ceiling.  “I bet the sonuvabitch heard everything dad told me about mom’s research, too.”

“Did he seem interested in you?”  The harsh tone of my voice made me wince.  I did not like the thought of a polished, suave man like this looking at Duo.  Duo was bloody attractive.  Absolutely lekker.  Hundreds of people looked at him every day.  It was inevitable.  I’d have to get this doff jealousy under control if I was going to be staying with him.  It was not on.  I hastily clarified, “Do you think he was watching you?”

“Yeah,” he replied.  “Creeped me out.  I didn’t want him to get a clear view of my mom’s notes.”

“But he saw them?”

“Oh, yeah.  He saw ‘em.”

I turned back to the phone and started scrolling through the website results, skimming the mission statement on the man’s corporate website before going back to the news articles that had come up.  Duo read over my shoulder.  I hoped he was making sense of all this.  I couldn’t get a handle on exactly what this Treize Khushrenada’s business was, what he might want with an ancient artifact like the one Duo had told me about.  Either Duo’s mother had gotten it wrong and the portal was something else entirely or I wasn’t looking at the big picture.

“Fuck,” Duo spat, reaching out a hand for my phone and offering me the other half of his apple in exchange.  “Gimme that.”

I let him scroll through the search results himself as I grazed through my second breakfast.  “What does he want?”

“According to this, world peace,” Duo replied, scanning the text on the screen.  “But don’t believe everything you read.  His company is ginormous and, if I’m reading between the right lines, then he’s got political ambitions to go with his weapons R&D side business.”  His nimble fingertips tapped through a few more links.  “And, yup.  There it is: government contracts.  Shit.”

“I don’t understand.”  I knew when to admit defeat.

“What’s not to get?  He’s looking for more bang for his buck.  The portal’s supposed to be this epic weapon.”

I shook my head.  “But it’s ancient.  Modern weapons would surely out-stripe something that primitive cultures once feared.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not,” Duo replied with surprising reserve.  He was serious.  “You know that the Nazis scoured the world searching for occult sources of power during the Second World War, right?”

“They didn’t find anything.”

“They didn’t find anything they could _use_ in time to help them win the war,” Duo corrected.

“This is befok,” I retorted.

“Be-fuck?”  Duo grinned.  His eyes sparkled.  “Heh.  I think I can guess that one.”

I was sure he could.  I rolled my eyes.  “Insane,” I translated.

“Hey, who was it that was saying something about how dangerous these guys could be if _they_ believed in what they were looking for?  I coulda sworn it was just the other night…”

I sighed heavily and with mock irritation.  “Fine.  Khushrenada is ambitious, rich, well-connected, _and_ insane.”

“Befok,” he corrected, still grinning.  He then rolled a shoulder in an approximation of a shrug.  The grin slid into a droll look.  “I never said he wasn’t.”

“Where does Heero Yuy fit into all this?”

Duo leaned back, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and told me in an enigmatic tone, “A moment, please, and I shall consult the Great Google Spirit.”

I snorted.

He searched.  “Uh, let’s see.  Graduate student at Tsukuba University.  Wrote and presented a paper at some physics conference last year on – and I quote – ‘Antimatter and the application of Schroedinger’s paradox’.”

He looked at me.  I shrugged.

“It’s not Beowulf or Shakespeare.”

“No shit,” he agreed and turned back to the phone.  “The only other thing here is a Mixi page.  Looks like Japan’s take on Facebook.”

“Facebook?”

Duo grinned.  “Not very adventurous in Internetland, are ya, Tro?”

“No.  I ration the battery for _important_ things,” I replied, not all that offended, but willing to vent a little tension by playing along.

“Like what?” he asked, aiming that bloody sly grin of his at me.

I didn’t answer verbally.  I leaned in like I was going to kiss him but, at the last possible moment, I turned my head away to taste the skin over the joint of his jaw then nibble at his ear, burrowing my nose into his hair.  His arms dropped as he just about melted against me.

“Oh… OK,” he mumbled weakly.  “I think I can guess.”

“Hm,” I agreed and made myself stop pushing him up against the chest of drawers and its dusty television.  “So.  Yuy,” I reminded both of us.

“Yeah.  I still have no idea what he’s doing here following me around, packing heat.”

I nodded to the phone dangling from his grasp.  “Any connections between him and Khushrenada?”

Duo shifted his hips absently against the furniture as he looked it up.  I commiserated; I was more or less certain that I was going to be half-hard whenever I was in his presence.  Ambivalent comfort was a distant memory.

“Uh… nuthin’.  Maybe if I knew Japanese…”

“But maybe not.”

Duo blew out a breath.  “So, what do you think?  Is he a mercenary undercover as a college student on vacation?”

I shrugged.

Duo nodded to the scrap of paper Yuy had passed me at the market.  “Do you wanna go?”

I glanced at my watch.  If we agreed to the meeting, we only had about two hours to make up our minds.  “Put that away,” I said, gesturing to the phone.

He gave me a look that prompted me to explain the directive.  I did.  “I still have to show you how to use a knife without cutting off your own fingers, and _then,”_ I said with a stern look, “we’ll scout the place and decide whether to risk making contact or not.”

“Roger that, Major Trowa,” he retorted irreverently.

My glare was brief and half-hearted.  He grinned.  We got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Maat” means “friend” or “partner” (possibly “life partner”) whereas “kêrel” is slang for a boyfriend, guy, or young man. Trowa will likely use the former until his relationship with Duo officially progresses into the realm of the latter.
> 
> Also, it’s interesting to note that Martins (who is an American) says “Look after your man” which is pretty vague. “Man” could be merc-speak for “client” or it could mean “boyfriend”. In such a close group, all the guys have got to know that Trowa is head-over-heels for Duo, but it’s kind of a “don’t ask; don’t tell” thing.
> 
> Trowa’s flight itinerary is based on what I could find online. Also, I’m assuming that Trowa’s passport wouldn’t raise any flags (or alerts) when he passed through Ethiopia, Thailand, or Laos. I have no proof that these countries have more relaxed passport restrictions. Nor do I have any proof that he couldn’t enter the U.S. or the U.K./Europe. I just liked the obstacle it presented plot-wise.
> 
> Heero’s university – Tsukuba University (pronounced “scuba”) – is real and located near Japan’s largest particle collider where experimental research is done in the field of elementary particle physics (e.g. atoms and their quark components). The title of Heero’s paper – “Antimatter and the application of Schroedinger’s paradox” – is complete bupkiss, although Schroedinger’s research is very important in quantum physics. (Check out “Schrödinger’s Cat” and you’ll see what I mean.)
> 
> Mixi is a social networking site based in Japan and modeled after Facebook.
> 
> And now we know who the guy on the plane was that Duo noticed and mentally dressed in Alliance-type duds. Whatkind, bad guy!


	4. Ruins, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> South African English: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Duo POV

“Shit!” I swore, glaring at the dark ribbon of blood dripping off my thumb.  “Not again…!”

“Here,” Trowa said, inviting me closer with a flick of his fingers and pulling me into the bathroom for the third time in the last fifteen minutes.  He rinsed the cut with bottled water, patted it dry with a fresh Kleenex, and began the process of sealing it shut with superglue from his pack.  From slice to seal, the whole thing took, like, ten seconds.

Studying the other two sealed-up cuts on my right hand, I sighed.  “I suck at knife fighting.”  I said this as I watched the blood – oddly orange when viewed through drying superglue – puff up in a thin line along the edges of the wound.  Trowa applied another dollop and kept pinching my skin together.

“It’s an acquired skill,” he replied.  “But a rifle would be too conspicuous.”

That got my attention.  “You actually think you can get one of those here?  Just off the street?”

“Undoubtedly,” he said, his attention still focused on my thumb as he gradually loosened his hold.  “There isn’t much a roll of American dollars can’t buy in this part of the world.”

“Except a miracle,” I muttered.

Trowa pretended not to have heard me.  “Let’s give it one more go,” he said instead.

“Hey, you’re not gonna take my shiny toys away if I slice-‘n’-dice myself again, are you?”

I got a half-smile for that.  “We’ll see.”

It turned out that three was my lucky number, though.  Trowa drilled me on different ways to pull the hunting knife from the back of my belt and the utility knife from my left side in such a way that I maximized its effectiveness in the first strike.  I had to swallow back a bubble of bile once or twice when he told me where I’d be stabbing my attacker, but I had to admit that the eyes, throat, and balls were pretty sensitive areas and would probably deter a second attack if my first strike was on target.

“Do not hesitate,” he told me when he called a halt to my shadow fighting.  He stepped so close I could feel the heat of him all down the front of me.  The reality made a mockery of my memory.  He framed my face in his scarred, rough hands and whispered, “For your sake – for _my_ sake – never hesitate.”

I nodded readily, automatically.  Maybe it should have bothered me that I’d confessed to a helluvalot with that single motion.  Maybe it should have bothered me that Trowa would see it, know it, trust it.  I swallowed thickly as I watched a warmth enter his visible green eye, softening his fierce gaze into something eloquent.

He kissed me slowly, chastely.  It was all I could do to keep from glomping him again.

“Where’s your jacket?” he murmured.

“Closet,” I answered, knowing the moment was over and real life was waiting.

He gave me a tiny grin.  “Cupboard,” he corrected, turning away.

“Is not,” I replied.

“Is so,” he insisted, pulling my windbreaker off its hanger and handing it to me.

I rolled my eyes.  “Not.”  I shrugged into my jacket as Trowa did likewise. 

“Cupboard,” he insisted lightly.  I let it go.  For now.

We hefted our packs and left the hotel.  He’d reserved the room for two additional nights, but I had the feeling we wouldn’t be coming back.  I felt _really_ bad about the crispy comforter we were leaving behind and kinda grossed out when I thought about how last night’s clothes were folded up and packed alongside the few clean items (and the food) I still had in my new pack, but Trowa didn’t seem to have a problem with it.  I could only imagine the kind of stuff he was used to.  Ugh.

The meeting location we’d been invited to was a place called Buddha Park and, as I’d already highlighted it for a visit while we were in the area, I was able to tell Trowa that it was about twenty-four kilometers outside of town.  We rented a scooter with my driver’s license.  Trowa drove.  Having an excuse to keep my arms around him for an extended period of time made the trip extremely memorable.  Unfortunately, every pothole we hit bounced me against his back and the constant mashing of my pelvis against his rear made it memorable as well.  In a not-so-nice way.

“Dude.  Pilot _around_ the meteor craters,” I pleaded after the first ten minutes.

“Believe me, I am.”

And that was pretty much all that needed to be said about the state of Vientiane’s roads.

I kept my head down and my braid tucked inside my shirt where it was sandwiched between my new, inconspicuous backpack and my sweaty, itchy back.  I gritted my teeth and wished for a La-Z-boy and central air.  Not that I didn’t want my dad back safe and sound.  I did.  In the worst way.  But, damn it, modern conveniences made the list, too, y’know?

The park was every bit the tourist attraction it was touted to be.  The only thing that outnumbered the moss-covered, stone statues of Buddha, various devils, and congregation of bohdisattvas (of all sizes and poses) was the sheer number of shutter-button-clicking sight-seers.  Trowa cut the throttle down to almost nothing as he puttered through the dusty parking area, both of us scanning for familiar faces and indications of unfriendly ambushes.

“Four o’clock,” Trowa told me.  “Next to the reclining Buddha.”

I glanced over there and—

“Ah.  The fan from Japan.”  He seemed to be alone, standing there fiddling with his digital camera, spine stiff as people meandered around him lost in their own little winter holiday wonderland of exotic, sub-tropic off-the-beaten-path adventure.

It was easy to envy them their happy ignorance.  It was even easier to hate them for it.

We parked the scooter and I carefully pried myself off the seat.  Ouch.  I was really hoping that Tro and I wouldn’t have to go back the same way we’d come, but I didn’t dare vocalize the wish.  In this case, getting what I asked for could be… bad.

I refused to imagine all the could-be-worse scenarios as Trowa led the way in a roundabout route toward Heero Yuy, our newest friend-or-enemy.

He had to know we were approaching because he was still glaring at the statue in front of him like the power of his stare was keeping it from jumping up and doing a jig.  Trowa stopped half a step behind Yuy and I stood next to the guy, trying not to put my hands in my jacket pockets.  The jacket covered the knives nicely.  They were just a flick of my wrist away, but it’d be moot if I got my hands tangled up in fabric at a critical moment.

I took a deep breath.  “So, let’s cut the bullshit,” I proposed with stereotypical American bluntness.  I was inviting Yuy and any potential cohorts to underestimate me.

Trowa played along; I could feel his glare of displeasure aimed at me.

Yuy didn’t even look at us.  “You want your father.  I want to prevent Khushrenada from finding the artifact.

That was about as lacking-in-bullshit as you could get.  “So whaddya need us for?”

Yuy stiffened further, his gaze darting in my direction and then over his own shoulder at Trowa.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.  “He’s part of the package.  Take it or leave it, pal.”

“The location,” Yuy answered flatly.  “I need the location of the artifact.”

“Why don’t you just follow Khushrenada?”

“I need to arrive before he does.”

I shook my head.  “It’s a little late for that.  They’ve got, what, a twelve-hour head start?”  Assuming they’d left sometime yesterday afternoon and stopped for the night before continuing on at dawn this morning.

“Eight hours, forty minutes,” he replied.  “They’re heading to Pakse in the south.  By car.”

“How d’you know that?”

“GPS tracking chips on the cars.”  Before I could play devil’s advocate, he added, “Installed them myself.”

“OK, so if they’ve already got that big of a lead…?”

“I have a helicopter.”

OK, yeah.  That would cut down the lead time.  Especially if the rural roads were as delightful as Vientiane’s.

Yuy continued, outlining each point of his mission like he was manning a hole-punch machine on an assembly line, “We’ll avoid the jungle trails, get to the location first, and recover the artifact.”

“And my father.  He gets _recovered,_ too.  If I agree to this,” I added.

“In that case, we’ll also have to set up a distraction before pulling out.”

I pointed out, “A distraction isn’t going to help your anonymity.”

“Depends on the distraction.”

I still kinda felt like he was blowing me off.  I had to ask: “Why not just put a gun to my head and make me tell you what you wanna know?”  We both knew he had one.

His mouth quirked into a joke of a smile.  “That’s not my way.”

“Uh huh.”  Suspicious and disbelieving?  Me?  Yeah.  Totally.  I decided to be obnoxiously American again: “You wanna be my friend because, if the artifact thing isn’t there, you’re gonna need my help finding it before Khushrenada does.”

He didn’t deny it.  “Your mother, Lady Maxwell, came to us when she began to understand the nature of the gateway.  We promised to help her destroy it.”

“Who’s this ‘we’?  You got a turd in your pocket or somethin’?”

Yuy glared at me.

I stared back until it was clear that he wasn’t gonna answer my question.  I asked another.  “Is the gateway really that dangerous?”

“If it is real, yes.”

“But maybe it isn’t.  Real, I mean.”

“Given what could be on the other side, we cannot afford to assume it isn’t or that it will never be opened.”

Well, damn.

Yuy checked his wristwatch.  “We’re lifting off in fifteen minutes.  Any other questions?”

“Terms,” I corrected in the coldest tone I possessed.  “My father comes back with us—”  I gestured to Trowa and myself.  “—in the helicopter.  If I tell you where we’re going, then you have to help us rescue him and you have to get us back to Vientiane.”

He didn’t even hesitate.  _“Ryokai desu,”_ he said with a nod.  “Agreed.”

I blinked.  It couldn’t be that easy.

“Follow me,” he ordered, turning away.

“No,” Trowa interrupted.  “Show us on the map.”  He gestured to me and I fumbled in my pockets for the best map I had of the immediate vicinity.  “We’ll meet you there.”

Yuy glared.

Trowa glared back.

I snorted.  “Um, yeah, you were _way_ more impressive on your motorbike, man,” I drawled at Yuy, holding out the map.

He jabbed a finger at a forested area about a half a kilometer up the road.  “Fifteen minutes,” Yuy reminded us.

Trowa gave him a humorless grin.  It showed a lot of teeth.  I liked it, but I hoped like hell he’d never have a reason to use it on _me._   “You’re not going anywhere until we’re aboard.  Unless you’d prefer to tip Khushrenada off by flying that helo right up his arse.”

Yuy didn’t bother to reply.  He turned on his heel and stalked away on the marked tourist trail.

Trowa and I headed off in the other direction.  I took my time folding up the map as I grinned like a freakin’ maniac.

“What?” Trowa demanded a little impatiently.

“You said ‘arse’,” I told him.

“Oh, bloody—!  How old _are_ you, Duo?”  This was the first time I’d ever seen Tro look incredulous.

I answered, “Old enough to know you said a cuss word.  A British-y one.  And you made it sound pretty cool.”

He snorted out a laugh.

I blamed the situation for the sudden emergence of my juvenile sense of humor.  Jesus, but we were possibly a helicopter ride away from finding my dad.  Getting him back, though…  That wasn’t gonna be all that simple, was it?

“We need a plan,” I observed.  “If this Yuy guy is on the level and we actually find my dad… yeah, we’ll need a plan.”

Trowa led the way, walking with the unhurried pace of the average tourist, back to our rental scooter.  “We will have one,” he vowed.

I tried not to look surprised when Trowa strolled right past our set of wheels and toward the frighteningly overgrown public bathrooms.  Thank God he didn’t actually go inside because, blind devotion or no, I was so not going in there.  The front door looked like it was gonna eat me alive.

“We’re not taking the scooter?” I checked once we were both out of sight of the people in the parking lot.

“They’d hear us coming.”

“Yeah, but… they know we’re on our way anyway, right?”

Trowa paused in his survey of the jungle.  Maybe he was scoping out a trail or something.  “Duo, there are varying degrees of flaming red bull’s eyes.  I’m trying to minimize ours.”

“Oh.  OK.  I feel dumb.”

His lips twitched.  “Like an oke who can’t read the hieroglyphs on the wall right in front of his nose?”

That killed every trace of humor in a single strike.  I was instantly horrified.  Showing off for Trowa and then teaching him a few Egyptian characters were some of my all-time favorite memories.  Right up there with the shooting and hand-to-hand combat lesson… oh, and the long kiss goodnight.  Of course.  “I—I didn’t mean to—”  I swallowed.  “Shit, I am _so_ sorry, Tro.”

“Stop,” he said, stepping closer and pressing his finger to my lips.  “I just meant that we all start somewhere.”

“Feeling like an idiot?” I mumbled against his rough skin.

He shook his head.  “You’re not an idiot and you didn’t make me feel like one, either.”

I smiled with relief.  Trowa gave me that little, self-satisfied grin of his and then pulled his hand away in order to crook a finger at me.  Christ, was he sexy.  Wherever he went, I would follow.  That’s how I ended up shadowing him through a mucky, humid jungle on a not-so-short shortcut to the supposed rendezvous point.  I was sweaty and panting before long.  The close, thick air was killing me and Trowa had to reach a hand back for me to take in order to haul me up an incline that my sneakers hadn’t been designed for conquering.  Trowa’s boots handled it just fine, of course.

Footwear envy aside, I was relieved to see the helicopter through the tangle of vines and thick tree trunks.  We were above the small clearing enough that Yuy was visible.  He’d lost the jean jacket at some point and I got a look at the leather sidearm harness he had on over his green T-shirt.  There were two pistols tucked up against his ribcage.  He wasn’t even trying to conceal them now.

Movement from the open loading door drew my gaze.  I didn’t know who I’d expected Yuy’s partner to be, but some old dude with long, grey hair and a pair of weird goggle-type glasses wasn’t it.

“If we wait any longer, we’ll lose our advantage,” he said.

Yuy didn’t budge.  “We’ll lose it anyway without the exact location.”

“The Maxwell boy doesn’t trust you.  He’s not coming.”

That appeared to piss Yuy off.  “He’ll be here.”

The old man sighed.  “Five more minutes,” he agreed grudgingly.

Trowa tapped my arm and motioned for me to crouch down with him.  “There’s likely at least one more, a pilot.”

“The old guy’s not the pilot?”

He shook his head.  “Prosthetic hand.”

“Well, Hawkeye, what about Yuy?”

“He’s ground assault.”

I considered our options even as I made a mental note to introduce Tro to the wonderful world of Marvel-verse as soon as we got done being awesome and saving the day.  It was just _wrong_ that he hadn’t gotten the Hawkeye reference.  Dragging myself back to the issue at hand, I asked, “Can we take ‘em if it comes down to a fight?”

Trowa nodded.  “But I can’t fly a helicopter.”

“Me neither.”  Why didn’t school prepare you for real life situations like this?  Damn it, I knew I should’ve gotten into military RPGs back when they’d been cool.  Now everything was zombie apocalypse.  I mean, _seriously._   Zombies.  Seriously?  “Without the chopper, we’d have to get our hands on a Jeep or something.”  _If_ we had a falling out with Yuy’s group and had to make our way back to civilization on our own, it was gonna be a _loooong_ hike.

“It’s a risk,” Trowa agreed.

If I’d been alone, I would have taken it and hoped for the best, but I had Trowa to think about.  “D’you think it’s worth it?”

“Yuy has given you more of a choice than the others who were after you,” he pointed out.

“That we know about,” I amended.

“True.”

“Thus far,” I added for the sake of showing off my smarts twice in a row.

“Thus far,” he agreed.

There were too many unknown variables to be certain of everything… or anything, really.  I let out a breath.  Fuck.  If I trusted Yuy and Trowa got hurt… but if I _didn’t_ trust Yuy and I never saw my dad again…  “Fuck,” I hissed.  “I don’t know what to do.”  There went my smart points.

Trowa’s hand gripped my shoulder and I turned toward him.  His palm traveled down to the center of my chest where he pressed it to the fabric and flesh over my heart.  “If you don’t take this chance, will you regret it?”

“Yes.”

He smiled in understanding.  “Then let’s go.”

Yuy didn’t look all that surprised to see us when we clambered (well, OK, _I_ clambered; Trowa just sort of strolled, damn him) from the jungle and into the clearing.  He did, however, look relieved.  He motioned us toward the chopper and I saw that Trowa’d been right about there being a third member of Yuy’s team.  The pilot was a tall, beefy, bald man of indeterminate ethnicity who was called, simply, “O”.  His copilot with the prosthetic hand was “J”.  It made me wonder where the rest of the damn alphabet army was.

“You have a name?” Yuy asked, directing the question at Trowa.

To my surprise, he answered, “No.”

“Hm.  _Nanashi,”_ Yuy continued with a nod, “if you or Maxwell need to suit up, help yourselves.”  I followed his gesture through the loading door to the far wall of the helicopter’s hull.

“Holy shit,” I choked out, letting Trowa help me up inside.  Above us, the rotor blades were starting to turn.  Yuy fetched a pair of flight helmets for us.  Trowa was going over the offerings that had been secured to a convenient rack.  He handed me a semi-automatic rifle that looked like a close cousin of the one he’d taught me how to use and two clips of ammunition before choosing one for himself plus a pair of pistols and a harness like Yuy’s.

I was starting to feel underdressed.

“The location,” Yuy reminded me now that Tro and I were armed.

I didn’t have to dig into my backpack and consult my mom’s notes; when Trowa had gone out earlier for food and whatever, I’d looked through them again.  It’d helped pass the time.  “Wat Dong Sao,” I replied, and then I gave him the coordinates.

He relayed this to O as Trowa helped me with my helmet before putting on his own.  I’d never ridden in a helicopter before and the liftoff was pretty anticlimactic compared to a jumbo jet’s.  At least it was smoother than driving, even if the _whoop-whoop-whoop_ of the rotor blades made my ears feel numb despite the helmet cushioning.

I tried not to fidget, but it’s damn hard to keep yourself from bouncing off the walls when you’re going nowhere fast for three freakin’ hours.  I busied myself by glaring at the backs of the pilots’ seats at the front of the craft.  When I gripped the edge of my seat on either side of my knees, Trowa’s hand moved inconspicuously to rest on top of mine.  The move didn’t startle me, but I glanced his way reflexively.  Trowa was still leaning back against the skin of the hull with his eyes nearly closed.  Heero Yuy seemed to be almost-sleeping as well, his arms crossed over his chest and his hands probably curled around the grips of each pistol, ready for action.  I resolutely ignored him and turned my hand so that Trowa’s palm fit against mine and our fingers interlaced.  He looked completely relaxed, but his grip was so strong I was pretty sure his knuckles where white.

His inner tension made me wonder if we should have made time for a rematch before we’d cleared outta the hotel room.

 _Oh, shit._   I let out a deep breath as heat surged through my entire body at the thought of last night, of his rough hands moving so carefully over my skin, of his mouth opening to mine, the taste of him destroying my mind.  He’d devoured me without even trying.  Damn.  I’d hoped it would be good between us, but I’d never hoped for all that.

So… were we officially boyfriends now?  Or more like friends with benefits?  Or was last night a one-time thing?

Once my dad was rescued and safe, I’d get up the nerve to ask.  And then dad and I were gonna have The Trowa Talk.  No way in hell was I waiting until graduation to be with him if he wanted me.  It was impossible.  My dad and the board of directors at the company and our freakin’ battalion of lawyers could just _deal_ with the fact that I was in love with another guy.  Although the whole South African mercenary thing was probably gonna freak them out more.  I glared at my mucky sneakers.  Well, I’d crank open a can of genuine, no-artificial-ingredients-included Whoop Ass when I had to.  ‘Nuff said.

Trowa’s thumb stirred, brushing over the back of my hand.  I turned toward him and caught the shimmer of curiosity and speculation in his visible green eye.

I shook my head and grinned.  “Later,” I mouthed rather than use the mic attached to the helmet.  He nodded once with satisfaction and then glared in Heero’s direction.  I glanced over in time to see the guy’s eyelids slide shut.

So he’d caught us.  Big deal.  He wouldn’t be the last, I was sure.  I gripped Trowa’s hand tighter.

“We’re approaching the target,” J’s gravelly voice said through the helmet speakers.  “We’re going to drop you boys on an outcrop near a river.  Get ready to deploy.”

Yuy was already up and throwing open the loading door.  I reached for my seat harness, but Trowa tugged on my hand until I looked at him again.  “Follow me,” he mouthed, his expression deadly serious and even a little pleading.

I nodded.  “I’ll watch your back,” I mouthed slowly.

He gave me a sexy, crooked grin.  I wondered if it tasted the same as his other ones or if it was of a spicier variety.  Damn, I was gone for him.  In orbit.  Sayonara.

Oh well.  Moving along…

When Trowa unfastened his harness, I did likewise and let him approach the door first.  It was probably a good thing he did, too.  If I’d seen that glorified _outcrop,_ I probably would’ve mutinied.  But Trowa’s broad shoulders blocked my view and then, suddenly, Yuy was handing me down to him before making the four-foot jump with enviable ease.  I cringed back against Trowa as the chopper cut away from the ledge, blasting dusty, humid air at us.

Before I could get cranky about it, Yuy pulled out a handheld GPS unit and pointed toward a hint of what could be rock or stone in the steamy distance.  “Three point seven kilometers that way.”

Trowa squeezed my arm and took the middle position in our little caravan, following after Yuy when he strode off toward the edge of the lush, dripping-with-fog-condensation jungle.  After the first five minutes, I was damn glad I was bringing up the rear.  My sneakers were killing my ego with every slip and stumble.  I always managed to grab ahold of something to keep myself from ramming into Trowa, but it was the whole not-cool-flailing-of-arms and comically-wide-eyes thing that I was very much hoping to keep to me, myself, and I.

And then, just when I was starting to wonder if Laos had poison arrow frogs or tree-dwelling venomous snakes – some critter that would make my day immeasurably worse when I squashed it by accident – we fought our way through an unusually thick wall of green ferns and found ourselves in an overgrown meadow, at the center of which sat a _massive,_ dilapidated, moss-and-vine covered stone temple.  It had one central entrance that I could see and the whole structure was tiered.  Upon closer inspection, it looked like the entire building was made of steps – high, narrow, slippery steps, but steps nonetheless – right up to the roof where three, iconic, upside-down-beehive-shaped stone towers stood, lording over their jungle domain.

“Whoa,” I said, shading my eyes from the afternoon sun as I tried to get a better look at the structure.

Yuy didn’t pause to admire the scenery.  He marched right over to the front steps and the main entrance.  I meandered after him.  Trowa placed himself between me and the surrounding jungle as I continued to digest the monolith.

It was old, that was for damn sure, but there was something about it that seemed off.  I’d never been as geeked about Asian ruins as Solo had – he’d been something of an expert even when he’d been just a kid in junior high school – but some of the stones seemed unnaturally worn and rounded.  I paused to examine one.  It was a corner stone.  Even ancient people would have known better than to use a material that was susceptible to erosion for the foundation of a building, especially one of great importance as this one obviously had been.

But wait… it wasn’t just a few corner stones that were on the verge of cracking.  There were too-smooth, too-crumbled blocks along the entire outer wall, spaced almost evenly, right up to the main entrance where Yuy was reaching for the ancient handle that had been carved into the rock.

“NO!” I shouted, jerking to a stop.  “Don’t touch that!”

Yuy froze, his fingers millimeters away from the door.  At my side, Trowa had drawn a pistol and was scanning the area for whatever had set me off.  Wild monkeys or rampaging elephants or something.

I gestured for Yuy to back away from the door.  “It’s a trap.  You open that and the entire thing’s gonna collapse.  See?”  I pointed above his head to the equally unsound blocks over the door itself and then to the others along the wall.  “It’ll fall like dominoes.”

Exhibiting unprecedented care, Yuy retreated from the front steps.

“We need to find another way inside,” I concluded.

Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be one.  We circled the entire temple, but the front entrance was the only one on the ground level.  Heaving a sigh, I planted my hands on my hips and looked up… and up… and up.  Five stories up.  At least.

The towers glared down at me, as if double dog daring me to come up there and spit in their archways.

“Is it safe to climb?” Trowa asked.

“Probably not,” I admitted.  It looked like the last time anyone had been by to perform regular maintenance and upkeep had been sometime around the fall of the Roman Empire.  (Well, OK, maybe not that long ago, but you get the point.)  “But it’ll be safer than trying the front door.”

I scouted for a section of the step-wall that was in acceptable condition.  “Here,” I finally decided, choosing an area that wasn’t as overgrown with slick moss and had the majority of its blocks intact.  “We should go up single-file.”

Unsurprisingly, Yuy lead the way.  Trowa brushed my hand in passing and then he was moving up the wall, scaling each insanely tall and panic-inducingly narrow step with grace.  I suppose we could have let Yuy do this all on his own but, from the top of the temple, we’d probably have a better view of the surrounding land.  Then Trowa and I could figure out a rescue plan.

Going up was torture, but I figured falling ass over braid back down would be worse.  I gritted my teeth and clawed my way up the steep incline, accepting Trowa’s hand and a moment’s respite at the top.  And when I’d caught enough breath to actually give a damn, I congratulated myself; it _was_ one helluva view.

“How should we do this?” I asked Trowa.

He pointed toward what was clearly an overgrown road when seen from up here.  “There’s the trail.”  He scanned what was left of the meadow.  “They’ll probably park their vehicles here—”  Another point.  “—and if they leave your father in the car—”

“I’m going in after the artifact.”

I blinked.  Trowa stiffened.  We looked in Yuy’s direction.  His hands were at his sides, empty, but I got the impression that he was prepared to reach for a weapon.

He added, “I need your help, Maxwell.”

“Huh?”

He gestured unhappily to the stone structure beneath his feet.  “I don’t know anything about ancient ruins.”

Well, this sure as hell wasn’t my specialty.  I opened my mouth to tell him so.  Trowa put a hand on my shoulder.  His expression was thoughtful.  “Going inside may give us the best advantage.”

“How so?” I demanded.  I was all for kicking some ass, jumping in a Jeep with my dad in the back seat, and burning rubber the hell outta here.  Except that I didn’t know how far whatever was left in the gas tank would get us.  And then there was the whole you-can’t-burn-rubber-on-muddy-potholed-jungle-trails thing.  Making our getaway in a helicopter while giving them the finger would be more poetic.  And just plain more awesome.

Trowa explained, “We let the enemy forces divide themselves.  If we know the layout, we can potentially trap a smaller group of them inside.  If your father enters the temple with them, we can try to separate him from them and then make our escape.  Or, if your father remains outside, we’ll have fewer adversaries to deal with before we can get him back to the pickup point.”

“Oh,” I said.  “That’s… a pretty good plan.”

Trowa smirked.  “It has the best chance of working if we’ve reconnoitered the temple before they get here.”

“Right.  OK.”  I studied each of the towers carefully.  The central one looked like it had withstood the elements better than the other two, so I headed there, watching my step carefully.  The vines and moss covering the stone roof _looked_ like they were the glue holding this place together, but looks were deceiving.  The plants that had taken root in the crevices between the blocks were actually pushing the stones further apart, eroding them and – in the case of the moss – probably digesting them.

I thrust out a hand behind me when Trowa moved to follow in my footsteps.  “Not too much weight in one place,” I warned and, ignoring the wind which was bumping the rifle against my thigh and blowing strands of sweaty hair in my eyes, I traversed the roof.  My palms were sweating by the time I got to the central tower.

“Duo?” Trowa called.

“Just a sec,” I answered, looking over the tower, examining its structural stability.  Then I leaned forward through one of its four archways and peered down into the gloom below.  The light of the afternoon sun was at just the right angle to show me a second, steep-and-narrow set of stairs leading down into the chamber below.  How thoughtful of the long-legged, tiny-footed people who had built the damn thing.

I turned around and grinned.  Pointing, I informed my audience hovering tensely at the edge of the roof, “Stairs!”

Trowa started toward me before Yuy could claim the right to be next.  I moved around to the other side of the tower and Trowa stood on my left while we waited for Yuy to cross the roof.  Trowa put out an arm to keep me from diving down the steps.  “You first,” he told Yuy in a tone that only a moron would argue with.  “It’s your objective.”

I knew I should probably go first.  I was the one who’d been force fed archeology minutiae from the moment of my birth by an over-enthusiastic parent, after all, but Yuy didn’t argue and I didn’t dare suggest otherwise.  Trowa and I still had to go inside and scope the place out, but I was guessing he’d had his fill of my suicidally daring King of the Crumbling Temple Show.

Yuy produced a flashlight and made his way down slowly.  Trowa handed me one of his – I had no idea if he’d brought these with him all the way from Lagos or if he’d helped himself to them in the chopper – and then we followed.

“So much more fun on the way down,” I complained, having to brace one hand in a very unmanly fashion on the steps above as I wedged my feet into the inconceivably stingy ledges, gimping my way down sideways.  My Converse All-Stars were so not all-starring today.

As soon as I reached a flat surface that was wider than four-point-two inches, I scanned the inside of the temple.  Creepy crawlies skittered away from the beam of the flashlight and I was glad for my long-sleeved jacket.  Eugh.

Well, they were welcome to the walls.  I stepped carefully along the debris-strewn floor, approaching what appeared to be the main gallery of the temple.  Although the temple was something like five or six stories tall, there only appeared to be three main levels surrounding the center of the structure where a ginormous stone Buddha with eight arms sat smiling as centipedes trickled and cricked over its body.  I shuddered in sympathy.

Trowa bumped me from behind, startling me.  I almost squeaked.  “Gogga gonna get you?” he teased.

“Gogga?”

He scritched two fingers up my arm, mimicking the movements of a cockroach-type insect.  “Gogga gogga.”

“Gah!” I objected, shoving at him and dusting the imaginary insect off my jacket sleeve.  “You sick, sick man.  That’s so not cool I don’t even.”

“You don’t even… what?” he prompted.

“I don’t even have the words for how not cool that was.”

He grinned and squeezed my arm.  “I’ll go first, shall I?  Give the beasties a skrik for you?”

I didn’t know what a skrik was, but I gestured for him to go right ahead.  “Skrik out, man.”

We covered the top level, mapping out the collapsed walls and crumbling stairs.  Away from the hollowed-out center of the temple, the floor was divided into two levels of smaller chambers, perhaps for the monks who had once lived, worked, and worshipped here.  A place like this must’ve required a lot of attention… unless you liked _gogga-gogga._

I shuddered.  Gimme a nice, hissing snake any day.  Hell, even a beady-eyed rat or a plague-infested bat.  I’d pass on the cockroaches, black widows, and scorpions, k’thanks.

“Lots of places to hide your father if we have to go that route,” Trowa observed quietly, passing the beam of his flashlight over the various piles of debris and the maze of still-standing walls and columns.

“Yeah, but he’s not gonna be crazy about the stairs,” I replied, eying the glorified toe-grips.

Yuy braved the dark, gloomy rooms above.  I couldn’t quite bring myself to take on more steps and bugs when there was a maze right here for me to learn and creepy crawlies a-plenty.  Trowa and I had moved through about half the level (at my estimate) when we heard Yuy call out.

“Maxwell!  There’s something up here.”

“How many legs does it have?” I muttered, but I headed for the nearest stable-looking staircase nonetheless.  I tried to ignore the sounds of exoskeletons and pointy insectoid feet skittering in the dark as I homed in on the glow from Yuy’s flashlight.

He looked up at me as I drew closer, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow.  “Look,” he instructed me, indicating the object of discovery with an arcing gesture of the light.

I blinked at what appeared to be a metal chest.  “That’s not ancient.”  I crouched down, getting a good look at the locks, which seemed to be made of steel, and a poor grade of it, too.  They were rusty.  I’d never seen anything quite like them.  I gave the chest a second top-to-bottom, end-to-end scan.  The color and condition of the thing sorta reminded me of World War II memorabilia that I’d seen in museums during school field trips.  I leaned forward and blew the dust and whatever off the lid.  There appeared to be some kind of writing on it.  Chinese or Japanese.

“Can you read this?”  I gestured Yuy forward.

“Ah.  It’s a munitions chest.  Japanese army.”

“Japan hasn’t had an army since World War II,” Trowa contributed.

“What would it be doing here?” I asked, looking between him and Yuy.

Yuy answered.  “Japan occupied this area briefly during the Second World War.”

Scowling, I panned the area with my flashlight beam.  “Is this the only one you’ve found?”

“Ah,” he confirmed.

Well, this was weird.  What were the odds that the Japanese army would have bothered to come inside this crumbling temple at all _and then_ forget to take one lone box of shit with them when they left?

“Is it safe to open?”  I looked over at Yuy.  “I mean, d’you think there’s a mine inside or something?”

“Some bullets or army rations perhaps…”  Then he shrugged, expressing in eloquent silence that he really didn’t have a clue.

I sighed and reached for the lid.

“Wait,” Trowa whispered, playing the beam from his light over the wall above Yuy’s discovery.  “Look at this.”

I did as instructed.  “Ho—ly shit…”

I stood and gaped at what was written right there on the wall in what looked like black permanent marker.  An illustration of a hand, then a quail chick, and a lasso.  It was my name… in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.  But, what was more… this was—

“My mom’s handwriting.”

Trowa looked up sharply.  “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, she always added this little scythe flourish to my name.  A swoosh.”  I’d loved that swoosh as a kid.  Looking at it now, the temple, the creepy crawlies, our ally of dubious motives all faded away and the past pressed forward.  I remembered reading my own name – written just this way – on Christmas present tags; I remembered giggling as my mom signed my name with a swish on the toys I was determined to take to Hilde’s house for playtime; I remembered that first afternoon spent sitting at our kitchen table while she’d shown me what my given name and my nickname would have looked like to the ancient Egyptians.  She’d taught me their hieroglyphs.  This had been _our_ language.  Me and my mom’s.

“Oh, Christ,” I choked.  “She was here.  She was _right here.”_

I pressed my hand to the wall, uncaring of what might have been creeping or crawling or sliming or slithering over it as little as five minutes ago.  I blinked my eyes, bit my lip, and forced the past back to where it belonged.  I took a step back.  Looking down at the chest, I said, “Open it.”

No one objected this time.

Yuy fiddled with the latches and lifted the lid.  Inside—

 _“Nani?”_ he hissed.

I reached in and grabbed it before he could take it.  I turned the object over in my hand and… yup, there it was.  His name.

“This was my brother’s iPod.”  I could not freakin’ believe it, but there was no denying it.  It was the same model, the same color, and on the back he’d written his initials: SLM.  Sherman Lionel Maxwell.  Solo.

I stared at the gizmo in my hand.  It and the pair of once-upon-a-time-state-of-the-art mini earphones had been sealed up in an airtight plastic baggie.  If the battery hadn’t burst and corroded the contacts at some point over the last eight years, I could probably still use the damn thing.  Christ, I’d lusted after this when Solo had gotten it for his birthday.  I’d driven Solo _past the point of insane_ begging to listen to just one song on it.

Oh my God.  What could have possibly convinced him to leave it here for me?

I looked up at my mother’s handwriting.  A chill shivered through me.

“Something else was kept in here,” Trowa observed, pulling my attention back to the chest.  I glanced down and, sure enough, there was a depression in the bottom lining.  Something vaguely double-L shaped, like one “L” had been rotated 180-degrees and stacked on top of a second.  It could almost have been a backwards “S” except it was far too angular.  Well, whatever it was, it had been about a foot and a half long and each leg had stuck out for about eight inches at right angles.  It had been something like four inches across from end to end, perfectly uniform.

“It’s gone now,” I agreed.

Yuy’s shoulders slumped and, suddenly, I realized that this must be what he was looking for.  The thing that had been taken from right here inside this chest was half of the key!

Holy fuck.  It really existed.  It was real and it was _out there_ somewhere in the world.

I startled, looking down at the 2004 model iPod in my hand.  Had my mom taken the key?  Had she left Solo’s music player for me as some sort of sign?  Was there an audio file on this that would tell me where she’d taken this half of the key or what she’d done with it?

Wary and wondering if Yuy was drawing the same conclusions I was, I took a step back from him, stuffing the player into my jeans pocket.  Suddenly, Trowa was there between us, bristling in silence… but Yuy still hadn’t moved.  He was staring into the chest, his hands on his knees, crouching on the grimy floor.

I had no idea what the guy was thinking or what he would have done.  And I was never gonna find out, either; just then, the stones beneath our feet began to throb.  All of us froze.  Listened.

A rumbling slowly built and, though it was muffled through the walls and distorted as it echoed down the stairs from the roof, it had to be the sound of approaching diesel engines.

“Um, the plan?” I said by way of reminder, prompting Trowa to show-and-tell this awesome strategy of his that was going to save the day.

He nodded, but he didn’t move away from Yuy.  “If you’re still going to help us, I need to know right now.”

“I promised I would,” Yuy replied tonelessly.  “I will.”

“Then we have to move.”

I thought of the temple’s fragile front entrance and I knew he was right.  If Khushrenada decided to try the doorknocker, the three of us could be crushed in the resulting collapse.  I didn’t spare a thought for the creepy crawlies as I hauled ass back to the staircase we’d come down.  The sunlight had thickened into the late afternoon variety, turning a rich gold in the time we’d been roaming and studying this place.  I could see it spilling in through the base of the towers on either side of the one in the center, but there were no steps leading upward to either of those.  Oh, super: there really was only one way out.

The three of us clambered back up the staircase as quickly as we could.  In the surrounding meadow, the engines of robust off-road four-by-four Jeeps still chugged and growled.  I thought I heard voices as well, but couldn’t be sure.  When I was a stretch away from peeking out over the bottom edge of the tower’s open archway at the new arrivals below, Trowa grabbed my arm.  My sneakers skidded against the slippery, worn stones and I almost lost my grip.

“The hell!” I hissed at him.

“Wait,” he whispered back.  On his opposite side, Yuy was crouching on the stairs, head just below the lip of the opening.  “We’ll wait until they’re working.  Everyone’s staring at the temple now.  They’ll see us surely.”

“Oh.  Right.  Obligatory gaping time.  Gotcha.”  I tried to find a more comfortable seat.  I couldn’t.

“Be ready to run for the back edge of the roof if they try the front entrance,” Trowa advised.  “And stay low.”

I nodded.  Outside, I heard the engines cut and the sound of doors slamming.  More than six doors.  That meant they had at least two Jeeps.  Or three with two doors apiece.  I wondered if my dad was even now sitting out there, gazing up at where Trowa and I were hiding with our new friend.  I wondered if he was OK – he wasn’t gettin’ any younger, y’know – and I wondered what I’d do about it if he wasn’t.

“Hey,” I breathed as the conversational jabber outside and five freakin’ stories down continued to be completely unintelligible.  “Gimme a preview.”

Trowa quirked a brow at me.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to say it: “If they had to force him to talk… what should I expect?”

Trowa reached out and put an arm around my shoulders, drawing me right up against his side.  He bent his head and whispered in my ear too softly for Yuy to hear, “He probably won’t be able to use his hands.”

What?!  “His hands?” I mouthed back, fisting my own.

“The hands are highly sensitive and susceptible to extreme pain, but damaging them won’t impair the captive’s mobility, mind, or ability to communicate.”

My stomach rolled onto a 25-foot-high diving platform and tossed itself over the edge.  “Jesus Christ.”  I bit my lip to keep from gagging.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

I shook my head.  “No.  _I’m_ sorry.”  I gripped his forearm to anchor myself as I closed my eyes and concentrated on taking deliberate, even breaths.  “I’m sorry you know shit like that at all.”  Which begged the question of whether or not he’d ever been called upon to use that knowledge.  I decided I couldn’t think about that right now.  Instead, a new horror was unveiling itself before me.

“Oh, fuck,” I rasped.  “Last night…”  When I’d slept so warm and peacefully beside him, when he’d kissed me and I’d kissed him back, when I’d lost myself in the hot rush of his body heat and the sound of his voice…  “Were they—?”  I gritted my teeth and spat the question out, “Were they hurting him?”

Trowa sucked in a breath.

“No.”  I jerked my head away.  “No, don’t answer that.  Stupid question.”

“Duo,” he insisted, growling at me.  “You needed to rest and you needed to focus so you could be strong for him _now._   Your father will heal.”

“But I should’ve—”

“You are doing everything you can.”

“Short of hiring a private army.”  Of course I thought of it _now._

“No,” Trowa objected in a soft, quiet tone.  “You would never be able to place so little value on human life.”

I opened my mouth to argue.  I shut it.  He was right.  There was no way in the world I could pay someone to throw themselves in front of a bullet just so I could get something I wanted.  Even for my dad’s sake.  I could never do that. I instantly hated myself.

“Your father knows that about you,” Trowa continued, “and he loves you for it.”

Maybe that was true, but it wasn’t very helpful.  How had I gotten us into this?  We were sitting on the equivalent of an ancient time bomb, waiting to see if some bozo down there was gonna hitch up his car to the stone door in an attempt bust into the place.  We were one idiot away from running for our lives.

“He’s gonna be pissed about this,” I predicted darkly.

“And proud,” Trowa argued.

I rolled my eyes and grumped, “How d’you figure that?”

In the next instant, he grabbed my braid at the base of my neck and jerked me toward him, and then he kissed me.   _Hard._   When he pulled back, I just blinked at him, so shocked I couldn’t even… 

“Guess,” he ordered me.

“Oh.”  That was all I said as I stared at the banked rage and fear churning the one green eye I could see, at the proud smile that tightened his lips.  “That’s why.”

“Yah,” he said.

I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I was torn between laughing, crying, punching him in the gut for yanking on my hair, and curling up in a ball so I’d never have to face the world again.  My fingers tightened around the rifle at my side.  Damn.  I’d never really thought about what it would mean to me to hear Trowa tell me he was proud of me.  It should have been patronizing, but it wasn’t.  It really, really wasn’t.  It scared me.  It scared me that I could lose that before this was all over.  I could fuck up and lose that.

I felt my other hand start to shake.  Trowa grabbed it and squeezed my fingers tightly.

“No!” I heard someone – a man – say from over the wall and in the field below.  It was a voice of authority, but I didn’t recognize it.  “The structure is too weak in this area to risk opening the door without stabilizing the stone casing first.”

“Out of curiosity, what makes it unstable?”

I stiffened.  I knew that voice.  That was Mr. I-beg-your-pardon-while-I-read-over-your-shoulder-in-first-class.  That was Treize Khushrenada.  I was kinda surprised that he’d bothered to come all the way out here with his henchmen, but I guess if you wanted something done right, you had to supervise it yourself.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head.  Twenty bucks said the greedy, power-hungry bastard’s pants weren’t even wrinkled from the ride.

The guy I was pretty sure I hadn’t met yet explained grudgingly, “Many of these stones have been treated with caustic chemicals.  They’re little more than solidified chalk dust.”

Well, wasn’t that nicely vivid?  At least it answered my question as to why ancient people would have used crappy stones: they hadn’t.  Someone else had come along and crap-ified them later.  Maybe whoever had hidden the key here in the first place.

“Ah.  Thank you, Professor Chang.  As always, your assistance proves itself invaluable.”

Rather than acknowledging the compliment, Chang barked out orders for someone (or several someones) to dig the hi-lift jacks out of the vehicles and, a few minutes of clanking and banging later, we heard the sounds of metal scraping against stone as they got to work.  It looked like we were gonna be here for a while.

Trowa motioned for me to turn my back to him.  I perched awkwardly on the steps while he rummaged in my pack.  He then handed me a hunk of some kind of jerky and a bamboo tube of what looked like sticky rice.  Food.  Ugh.  I was so not even interested.  Interest was still back in Vientiane barefoot, lost, and reading the roadmap to Enlightenment upside-down.

“Eat,” he instructed and, sighing, I did.  Oddly enough, I felt better afterward.  Less queasy and more alert.  Still, for the record, waiting for the opportune moment sucks rocks.  Slimy ones.

The acoustics of the temple amplified every metal clank and rough scrape, but no matter how hard I listened, I did not hear the voice I was waiting for.  Hell, no one even mentioned my dad.  I was beginning to wonder if he’d come along at all… which made me wonder if he’d already outlived his usefulness…

_Crack!_

I jumped and looked automatically in the direction of what had sounded like thunder on a clear, sunny day.

_Cr-cr-cr-crk-k-k—!_

No, it wasn’t thunder.  It was the door.  Or maybe it was the stone casing and collapse was imminent.

_CRACK!  BOOM!  Hisssssss…_

Before I could swallow my heart back down into my chest where it belonged, a raucous cheer went up.  Damn, that sounded like a lotta helpers.  A small army of them.  And it sounded like they were all expecting to get hazard pay bonuses now that they’d broken down the damn front door.

Trowa nudged my shoulder.  That was our cue. I hurriedly wiggled and winced up to the roof.  Now that everyone was probably too busy congratulating themselves to be paying close attention to movement above, we could scope out the scene.  We stayed low and scanned the small, overgrown field.  My gaze leapt from one Jeep to another (and there were six in all), finally stopping at the sight of a machete-armed Laotian opening one of the doors and impatiently motioning for someone sitting in the back seat to get out of the vehicle.  I held my breath as my dad complied slowly, gingerly.

I could tell that he was keeping his face expressionless by some length of his pride.  That damn British lord’s pride.  Even with his wrists bound in front of him and the fingers of his right hand bandaged, he stood tall.

_“Squared shoulders, lifted chin!  The mark of a good man is how he carries himself, Dominic!”_

Fuck, I could still remember his lectures on the subject when I’d been a slouchy, sneaker-toe-scuffing kid.  And here he was looking like he was about to hold court despite the bindings and bandages.  Suddenly, I understood how it was possible to be furious with someone even as you were overflowing with pride.

But back to the bastard who was in serious need of an ass-whoopin’…

I glared down at the pompous and posturing supposed advocate of world peace.  My fingers curled into claws against the weather-beaten stones.  I felt Trowa’s thigh bump mine in reminder.  Yeah, I wanted to scream until the bastard’s head exploded.  And then I wanted to rip what was left of it off the sonuvabitch’s Goddamn shoulders and stomp on it.  I clenched my jaw.  It was painful strangling that impulse into submission, but I’d wait for my chance.  That was the only option that would help my dad now.

When Khushrenada waved my father toward the entrance of the temple, Trowa began squirming back to the staircase, tugging on my belt until I gave in and followed him.

“Can you contact O and J?” Trowa rasped at Yuy.

I almost burst out laughing.  O and J.  OJ.  Duh.  Of _course._

Yuy nodded and pulled out a cell phone.

“Do it,” Trowa commanded.  “Pick up on the roof in twenty minutes.”

With a nod, Yuy moved up the stairs, maybe to catch a stronger signal.

“Can we trust him not to take off and leave us here?” I mused, more abstractly curious than anything.

“He knows you have the iPod your mother left behind in your pocket.  He’s not going anywhere without that and, therefore, _you.”_

And I sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere without Trowa, so I guess we didn’t have anything to worry about.

“C’mon,” Trowa further ordered.  I was kinda liking this assertive, take-charge version of him.  Had the circumstances been different, I would’ve been tripping all over myself to catalog all the sexyisms he was exhibiting.  “Let’s get your father.”  He hooked his hand under my arm and led me back down into the temple.

My next question was _“How?”_ but I didn’t actually have time to ask it.  From below, flashlight beams began playing over the muck-covered stones of the temple’s main gallery.  The sounds of footsteps were only seconds behind them.  Trowa nudged me against a shadowed wall which provided us a decent vantage point from which to track the new arrivals.

“Spread out!” Khushrenada ordered cheerfully.  “Look for a hiding place, an altar or a box of some sort.  Summon the professor if you find anything that could be significant.”

“And hurry,” Chang added.  “A few steel jacks won’t hold that casing stable for long.”

A translator conveyed this and there was a moment of confusion as the dozen hired henchmen scattered in all directions, beginning what could be called a systematic search only by a _great_ stretch of the imagination.

“Wonderful,” Trowa grunted, monitoring their chaotic movements.

I was more interested in Chang.  He looked every bit as Chinese as his name.  He also looked familiar somehow.  It wasn’t until he scowled in my general direction that it hit me: he’d been on the plane, too.  I’d assumed he was the heir to some Chinese mega corporation or something, but he was a _professor?_   The hell.  The guy couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me.  Where’d he get his degree?  Outta a cup of instant ramen noodles?

Well, wherever he’d gotten it, it had impressed Khushrenada enough to bring him along on his little jaunt of terror through the Laotian countryside.

I watched Chang join in the search and begin bossily directing men where to look.  Ah, the joys of midlevel management.

My father moved toward the Buddha.  His captor followed.

“I’m sure you imagined you’d be standing here with your son,” Treize Khushrenada said in an off-handed tone as he peered up at the mighty stone statue.  I had to bite my lip to keep the bray of laughter contained.  _Hah!  Shows what you know, you worthless pile of cockroach munch._   He continued with manufactured sincerity, “My apologies, Lord Maxwell.”

My dad kept his distance from the guy.  I doubted it was because he was wary of him.  I was too far away to be sure, but it was more likely that the slime bag was simply too repulsive for my dad to bring himself to stand next to him.  “I have imagined many things, Mr. Khushrenada,” my dad replied in a tone that I knew from experience promised Serious Trouble.  “Some of which have already come to pass.”

Did my dad just threaten Mr. Big Shot Khushrenada?  I think so!

Khushrenada seemed amused by this but said nothing else.  The hired goons-with-guns quickly infested the temple, four on each of the main levels.  Trowa drew me back even further into the shadows on the third level and we waited for our chance.  I still didn’t know how in the hell we were gonna get my dad up here and it was starting to really worry me.  But Trowa was standing next to me, as calm as could be.  Part of me admired him for it.  Another part of me wanted to stomp on his foot. 

I waffled back and forth between admiration and stomapage.  I hadn’t always been this indecisive.  I wonder when that had happened.  Or maybe I was simply getting better at self-restraint.  So… did that mean that I’d gotten stronger or had my juvenile impulses gotten weaker?

That sounded, vaguely, like that stupid chicken versus egg question.  I’d ruminate on it later.

Instead, I alternated between staring at my dad, willing him to pick up on my psychic mind waves which were trying to tell him that I was nearby and getting ready to rescue him, and watching Trowa oversee the movements of Khushie’s troops.  It only took them about ten minutes of crawling through the rooms on the third level before I heard something that could have been a cuss word in Lao.  Or maybe a “eureka!”  I waited for it, knowing what the guy had just found and, sure enough—

“Plufessul Xang!”

Chang was charging up the steps before the last syllable of his very badly mispronounced title and family name finished echoing.  The other searchers on this level swarmed into that one tiny room where the metal chest had been left.  Flashlight beams on the first and second floors congregated near the stairs.  Yeah, the Easter Egg Hunt was over with, boys.  Time to turn in your baskets.

Five seconds after Chang disappeared into the maze of rooms, I heard him direct, “Take it downstairs and keep searching!  The artifact could be hidden elsewhere in the structure.”

This first task seemed to require all four guys who had been searching our level, leaving Chang behind in the room with my mom’s graffiti.  The other eight goon guys grudgingly returned to their survey of the other levels.  But I was sensing that now was our chance: Chang was alone up here with us.  Two against one.

Trowa shifted out of the shadows, motioning for me to follow him.  It was time to go to work.

We ghosted through the level, keeping low and out of sight from the people below.  (Not that anyone was looking up here.  They were all oohing and aahing over that stupid chest.)  We slipped up to the crumbling entrance of the room where Chang was probably focusing on trying to figure out that not-quite-hieroglyphic message.  Trowa leaned forward to get a look at guy’s position.  He pulled back and whispered into my ear, “Wait five seconds and then make a little noise.”

My eyes widened.  Was he _sure…?_

“Trust me,” he mouthed.

I nodded.  He slipped into the darkness of the room in perfect silence.  I counted to five.  And then I took a deep breath, stepped into view of the archway and cleared my throat.

Chang was so deep in puzzlement over the swoosh my mom had written under my name that his nose was almost touching the filthy wall.  In fact, he didn’t even hear me.

I rolled my eyes.  How embarrassing.

 _“Nihao,”_ I sang on a whisper and _that_ got his attention.  He startled, turning his flashlight toward me and then suddenly, before the beam could make it all the way to the threshold of the room, both he and it froze.  I moved into the room, avoiding the light, as I heard Trowa’s voice hiss softly, “I have no interest in killing you, but I will if you do not cooperate.  Understand?”

I shivered and waited for my eyes to readjust to the gloom.

Chang replied, “I understand.”

“Do not speak unless I tell you to.  Put your hands up.  Right.  Now behind your head.  Good.”

Trowa plucked the flashlight from the man’s grasp and tossed it to me.  I kept it pointing toward the wall where it wouldn’t blind Trowa.

“Now,” he continued, “call Lord Maxwell up here.”

Ah, now the plan was comin’ together.  Brilliant.  Trowa was brilliant.  My admiration knew no bounds at this point.

I watched as Chang swallowed.  His Adam’s apple moved against the knife blade poised over his throat.  I tensed at the hard look in the man’s black eyes.  He was furious even though Trowa had both his wrists in a very uncomfortable-looking grip.

“Do not make me repeat myself,” he hissed, applying pressure and pulling Chang’s hands further down behind his head, stretching the guy’s triceps and threatening to dislocate a shoulder or two.

Chang complied with the request.  “Lord Maxwell!” he shouted, his voice echoing out into the main gallery and below.  “I require your assistance!”

There was a moment of curious silence from outside, and then the scuff-and-step of a familiar, measured stride.

“Do watch your step,” I heard Treize Khushrenada say oily.

It wasn’t until I heard the sound of footsteps ascending stairs, that I released the breath I was holding and started breathing normally.  For some reason, I’d expected some kind of delay or refusal.  Thank God we hadn’t had to force Chang to give some kind of password like in the movies.

Every step seemed to take an enormous chunk of time.  An entire age of the Earth.  Dinosaurs could have re-evolved and gone extinct yet again what with how damn _long_ it was taking my dad to haul his ass up here.  Shit, I hoped that didn’t mean he was injured on top of whatever they’d done to his hand, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that now except hope that he really was OK… ish.

Finally, after I’d nearly convinced myself that I was stuck in one of those slow-motion horror movie nightmares, I heard my dad’s huffing breaths as he reached the top of the last staircase.

“Call to him again,” Trowa prompted his captive.

Glowering, Chang did.  “In here, Lord Maxwell.”

I could just _imagine_ the words my dad’s pride wouldn’t let him mutter: _Fantastic.  More bloody stairs._   I clenched my jaw to keep the slightly hysterical chuckle from squeaking out.

My dad waited a moment, taking several deep breaths before tackling the next flight.  When he’d reached the top, I waved the flashlight, signaling him closer with the beam.  Then, I waited, alternately reminding myself to relax and then tensing right back up again, until he was a step away from the threshold.

“How can I be of assistance?” he asked.

And then he entered the room.

I was there in an instant, keeping the flashlight beam steady on the far wall even as I was pressing a hand over his mouth.  “Shh, dad, it’s me,” I whispered.  “It’s Duo.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chang twitch.  I almost bit my own tongue.  Damn it.  No doubt he was glancing at the name written on the wall and putting two and two together.  Shit.  Why hadn’t I just painted a freakin’ bull’s eye on my forehead?  Trowa was gonna kick my ass.

“Dominic?” my dad rasped in a hushed whisper.  “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?!”

“Rescuing my old man,” I retorted.  “Duh.”

Before my dad could start lecturing me or threaten to ground me for the rest of my natural life, Trowa instructed me, “Take him upstairs.  Our twenty minutes are almost up.”

“Copy that,” I replied, setting the flashlight down on the floor and rolling it over to Trowa’s foot.  I started tugging my dad toward the door.

“Dominic,” he objected softly.

I paused and turned toward him.  I wanted to get him a good head start before Trowa did whatever he was gonna do to Professor Chang to keep the guy from alerting Khushers to our presence, but first dad and I were gonna need to establish some ground rules.  “Tro and I have it all under control.  Trust me for two more sets of stairs and then I will answer any damn question you have.”

“Trowa?” he echoed, startled.

Of course he’d pick up on that.  “I called.  He came,” I summarized… and then tried not to wince at that last word and the incriminating evidence on the second bed of our most recent hotel.  “And, by the way, yes,” I continued.  “You and I are gonna have a talk about him real soon.”

My dad actually chuckled.  Here we were, about to make a mad dash through dank and crumbling ruins in a bid for escape, hoping for rescue (which may or may not be on time), and he was _chortling._

“It’s about time,” was all he said.

“Duo, go,” Trowa commanded quietly.

I nodded and pulled my dad out of the room.  I timed it so that the footsteps of the guys being ordered back up to the third level to keep searching covered our departure.  It felt like it took only seconds for us to make it back to the steps leading above.  It’s true what they say: the homestretch really is the shortest.

“Here,” I told him, pushing him into the murky recess beside the stairway to heaven.  “When you hear the helicopter, start up these steps.  Watch your head – there’s a tower above us.”

“Where are you going?”  He reached for my arm but I evaded his grip easily.

“Gotta check on Tro.”  And then I was dashing soundlessly on the rubber soles of my sneakers back toward the room where I’d left Trowa with Chang.  The four Laotian goons were nearly at the top of the stairs and I had to duck behind a pile of crumbled wall and wait for them to disperse before I could risk a lunge for the steps.

At that precise moment, however, a slow drumbeat began to throb through the air.  I held my breath and listened…

No, that wasn’t a drumbeat and it wasn’t slow.  It was—

_Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop—!_

The chopper was here.  And, damn it, where the fuck was Trowa?!

I stood up.  I drew the hunting knife from the back of my belt.  I took a step around the rubble I’d been crouching behind.

And then—

_Crack!_

_Hissssss…_

I shook my head, blinking, as dust from above rained down on my head.  No, not dust.  Pulverized stone.  Bits of stone.  Like busted chalk.

_Oh… shit._

_CRACK!  CLANG!!_

_Hisss…isss…issss…!_

I didn’t waste time hoping I hadn’t just heard one of the jacks on the front entrance giving way.  Just as my own shout for Trowa got tangled up around my Adam’s apple, the men on all three levels cried out and freakin’ _raced_ for the stairs.  I moved out into the open, knowing they were all far too busy scrambling for the exit on the ground floor to worry about who I was, what I was doing here, or where I’d come from.

I raced to the staircase at the base of the room just in time to see Trowa wrestling with a very much alive and pissed-off-looking Professor Chang.  He shoved the guy in the direction of the stairs and then drew a pistol when Chang swiveled back to him, hands fisted.

“You have risked everything,” he hissed and then, with a murderous glare in my direction, he leapt down the steps and raced for the next flight of stairs.

Trowa didn’t hang around pondering the guy’s parting words.  “Duo!” he shouted, equally unconcerned about being overheard.  “Get to the stairs!”

_CRACK!_

_CRACK!  CRACK!_

_Hisss…_

I held out a hand to him even as I started jogging backwards.  And it was a good thing I had, too.

_CRACK!_

_Hisss…_

_BOOM!_

“Fuck!” I sputtered as dust rained down in a torrent and the stones beneath my feet shook.  The ceiling opened up above us and a block came crashing down, smashing through the floor not two feet away, between us and the exit.  If I’d been moving any faster, I woulda been pancaked.  Squish!  No need for confessions of the heart, then.

Trowa grasped my hand and tugged me back against him.  I glanced above and then at the now-gaping hole in our path, then back up again.  When the next crash came from across the temple, Trowa gave me a shove and I daringly jumped the space.  Trowa was an instant behind.

“DAD!” I shouted.  “GET YOUR ASS UP THOSE STAIRS!”

I could see him hesitating midway up.

The cracks of buckling stone, the booms of falling blocks, and the hiss of dust resettling echoed all around us.  The air was growing thick with debris.  I was getting seriously concerned that the towers were gonna be next to fold.

“MOVE!” I ordered him, racing with Tro toward the exit.

And then my worst nightmare swooped down into my waking life.

The towers fell.

To my left, the ceiling gave way and the stone monolith crashed through, obliterating its way through one level after another.  Then on my right, the same drama of destruction played out.

“No, God, _please…!”_

But my prayer was too late.

I was too far away to do anything except watch as the sunlight illuminating my dad turned dark with shadow… and then crumbling stone.

_“NO!!”_

I was barely aware of Trowa’s arms around my waist, holding me back from meeting those tumbling blocks head on.  I thrashed against him.  At some point, I’d dropped the hunting knife which was just as well.  I might have cut us both to shreds if I’d still had it in my possession.

And then the dust was settling and Trowa was shoving me toward the haphazardly piled blocks, aiming me toward the tiny window of sky we could still see.

“Dad!  _Dad!  DAD!!”_

Trowa pushed and I grasped and pulled, squirming my way upward in a panic-fueled frenzy.  I squeezed my way through the narrow fissure, kicking and punching my way free.

“DAD!”

I shouted, but I didn’t see him.  I reached a hand back for Trowa, felt his fingers grip my wrist and, bracing myself against whatever was beneath my sneakers, I pulled him through.  Once he got his hips through the opening, I was scrambling up the cracked and broken stairs, shoving at the bits and pieces of what had once been a magnificent tower.

And then, just inside the hollowed-out stone cap, I found him.

 _“Dad!”_   I dived in and reached for him, grabbing his arms and pulling at him.

He didn’t budge.

“Trowa!” I screamed and suddenly he was there, but instead of his hands joining mine, he was gripping the edge of a stone slab as if he could somehow lift it.  He couldn’t of course.  The thing had to weigh like five hundred freakin’ pounds and I just could not understand why he was worrying about that when I needed his help over _here—!_

My father’s face twitched.  He groaned.  He’d been knocked out, but he was gonna be OK.

“C’mon, work with me here, old man,” I begged breathlessly.  The temple was cracking, booming, and crumbling around us.  Another metallic _clang_ of a jack snapping under stress punctuated the temple’s death throes.  Above us, I could hear the chopper’s rotor blades beating at the air, thrashing and shaking the fragile structure.

Trowa gave up on lifting.  Bracing his shoulder against the block and wedging his feet against another mound of rubble, he started shoving.

It was at this moment that I realized why he was so focused on the damn block of stone.  It was lying on top of my dad’s legs.

_Oh God…!_

“Dom—inic,” my dad coughed just as cold realization speared me through the chest.

I shook my head.  “No.  No way.  You’re coming with us!” I ordered him pulling on his dust-covered arms.  But it was no use.  Trowa couldn’t budge the stone.  I couldn’t pull my dad free.  The temple was collapsing around us.

“Go with Trowa, Dominic,” my dad said, his voice weak and raspy.  So unlike him.

“I’m not leaving you behind _again!”_ I screamed.

 _“Go,”_ he repeated, his gaze piercing.

“No…”

The remnants of the staircase beneath us trembled, fragmented in a series of cracks that rang out like gunshots.  Suddenly, Trowa’s arms were wrapping around my waist, pulling me away.  The instant my hands slid off my dad’s arms, his eyes slid closed and his lips curved into a smile.  He looked peaceful.  Relieved.  Hopeful.

How could that be?

I was so confused I didn’t know if I was running or struggling or just letting myself be dragged.

My dad… I had to get to my dad…!

“Duo, _please!”_

He was just there!  Just _there!  Just…!_

“I can’t do this without you.  _Please, DUO!”_

Trowa was shouting at me.  He needed me.  But my dad…!

“I’m not leaving you here!” he roared.

Leaving…?  No, I wasn’t leaving my dad here.  I was not leaving him—

“Duo.”  This time, Trowa’s voice was soft, beckoning.  I blinked and looked at him.  “Do you love me?” he asked.  I blinked again.  I felt the vibrations of the grinding stones against the soles of my feet.

He didn’t wait for me to answer.  “Then come with me.  Please.”

Something in me shifted.  The metaphysical ropes that had been binding me to my promise not to leave my dad behind…  They snapped.  I grasped Trowa’s hand.

I’d never run a race over a tumbling, jutting, breaking blocks before.  I almost tripped once and Trowa hauled me up.  Then, he almost fell and I pulled him after me.  An instant later, the helicopter was right in front of us and Yuy was reaching out a hand.  Trowa shoved my arm into it as he grabbed the side of the loading door and braced his feet on the chopper’s landing skid.

When I took my next breath, I realized I was being lifted up – the whole machine was lifting away – and the world was crumbling beneath us.  Dust plumed up into the air again and again with every booming crash.  I helped Yuy haul Trowa into the cargo hold and then I was staring out at the still-crumbling ruins.  I felt Trowa’s arms around my waist as he anchored me where I knelt by the open doorway.

All I could do was cling to the threshold and watch as the stones fell inward, crashing and clapping against each other like thunder.

_Boom… boom… boom…!_

I just sat there and watched.

On the western horizon, behind the grey veil billowing up from the ruins, the sun was setting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Buddha Park (about 25 kilometers southeast of Vientiane) is not surrounded by jungle according to Google Earth. Was this another use of my Artistic License? Yes, I think so.
> 
> Wat Dong Sao (the temple) is a fictional temple located in the real Dong Hua Sao National Park in Southern Laos. It’s based on Ta Keo (a real temple) which is located in Thailand. 
> 
> On the subject of "ass" versus "arse," I’m actually not sure which one is more common for English speakers from South Africa, but I really like Duo’s amusement over Trowa’s use of the latter.
> 
> I tried to give “Professor Chang” the correct pronunciation slant in Laos, using this site as a guide: http://wikitravel.org/en/Lao_phrasebook 
> 
> “Nihao” means “hello” in Mandarin Chinese.


	5. Appearances, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: language, shounen ai/yaoi (reference to male/male sexytiems), reference to torture, character death
> 
> Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and the characters are not mine. I just fangirl them like nobody's business.
> 
> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> FYI: Not so much action-y stuff happening here in "Appearances". Gotta deal with the fallout and there's a LOT of fallout.

The destruction of the temple was guaranteed to make the international news.  The networks, once they learned that a British lord might have been trapped inside at the time of its collapse, would undoubtedly embellish what pseudo facts they could either find or manufacture with morbid sensationalism.  The very idea of it sickened me.  I could only imagine what this would do to Duo.  I swore to myself that he wouldn’t see any of it.  Not for as long as I could help it.

After the helicopter landed in Vientiane, I drove him to a different hotel.  He didn’t bother to take off his shoes or shrug out of his dust-covered jacket upon entering the room.  He was still wearing the belt with the utility knife and the now-empty hunting knife sheath when he sat down on the bed closest to the door.

“I’ll be back with provisions soon,” I told him.  His silence was scaring me but I wasn’t prepared for his grief, for reaction to set in.  I needed him to keep it together just a little longer.  I went through his pockets until I found his mobile phone and pressed it into his hands.  “Call me if you need me.”

I waited a moment.  He blinked once in response.  I went.

I was back in twenty minutes with bottled water, new toothbrushes, soap, facial tissues, and an assortment of likely-edible snack items.  The pharmacy had been the only shop still open at this hour and I hadn’t had the patience to explain the concept of takeaway to any of the restaurants nearby.  Nor had my stomach recognized the scents wafting out from their doors as anything resembling food.

Duo hadn’t moved in the entire time I’d been gone.  He was still sitting there on the end of the warped bed with his phone in his hands, his eyes dry and his braid windblown from the scooter ride back to downtown.  The creases in his denims and jacket were still dusty.

“Duo,” I said, locking the door behind me and setting my shopping down on the nearest available surface.

He didn’t move.

I knelt in front of him.  Perhaps in supplication: I was sorry – so bloody sorry – but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, to rip open the wound he seemed determined to clamp shut and seal up like the cuts on his hands from this morning.  I asked, “Do you want to take a shower?”

I placed my hands on his arms, willing him to look at me.  I wasn’t looking forward to seeing his pain, but I needed him to come back to reality.  I didn’t know what to do for him or for his father whose body was buried under cold, filthy stone in the dark jungle.  I didn’t know anything and I hated it.  I was one instant away from screaming or from shaking him or kissing him or—

“I left him,” he said.

The sound of his voice almost made me sag with relief.  “You honored his only request,” I argued, my throat aching with too many emotions.  “You chose not to die.”

He shook his head and stared at his hands.  “I chose you.”

At any other time, those words would have thrilled me.  They would have been the air I breathed.  Now they did nothing less than tear my heart to pieces.  I pulled off his shoes and kicked my boots away.  Then I wrapped my arms around him and hauled him back onto the bed and held him until he finally passed out from exhaustion.

He cried in his sleep.  That was when I acknowledged the fact that we needed help.

After my shirt sleeve was spotted and smeared with his tears, I untangled myself from him, took my phone out into the hallway and called Marshall Noventa.  I told him everything that had happened.  He promised to call the embassy and take care of it: “I’ll make sure a recovery operation is launched.  One of my colleagues will be joining you and Dominic as soon as he can get on a flight.”

I told him where we were staying and explained the security precautions I would require.

“He’ll be there by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”  I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Look after Dominic,” he requested and I felt heat gather at the back of my eyes.  Tears.

“With my life,” I promised and hung up.

I checked to make sure that my face was dry before I went back into the room.  It was.  All my tears were on the inside.  Not that Duo noticed.  He slept until dawn.

Dawn: the world had kept on turning all throughout the night.  It seemed so impossible, so absurd.  But here was the evidence.  It was a new day.

I didn’t so much convince Duo to take a shower as I made it unavoidable.  When he woke, I made him eat; I stripped him down to his shorts; I pulled him into the bathroom and started up the water.

“Wash up,” I told him, pressing my forehead to his as I grasped his shoulders, “and then come back to me.”

When he sighed in defeat, I knew he wasn’t completely lost and I left him to it.  I took the opportunity to turn on the TV.  Aerial footage of a collapsed ruin in the southern jungles of Laos was the first thing I saw.  The press helicopters were circling the destroyed temple like vultures.  I watched until I felt physically ill.  I sat on the foot of the bed, listening to the water run and Duo splashing in the shower, and I started remembering.

There were so many things I should have done differently.  I should not have relied on the tools that Treize’s people had used to brace the entrance open.  I should have realized that a helicopter at close range would have provided more concussive force than the six Land Rovers.  I should have just killed Chang and followed Duo and his father.  If I’d done at least that, then all three of us would have been clear of the stairs and towers before the helo had arrived.  I purposefully didn’t think of the half dozen mercenaries Khushrenada had left posted outside and the automatic rifles slung over each man’s shoulder.  I thought only of what I hadn’t done, what might have worked, how I had probably failed.

I hadn’t killed Chang.  I hadn’t been able to become a mercenary to Duo.  The thought of letting him see me do something like that had repulsed me.  Even if I’d waited until they’d left me alone with Khushrenada’s expert, even if no one had watched me do it, Duo would have _known._   He would have seen the blood on my hands and I wouldn’t have been able to lie to him.

I watched the pictures flash and wobble on the television screen as I went over the entire operation, finding other options with ease now that I was aided by hindsight, now that it was too late.

Too bloody late.

I’d fucked up and now Duo’s father was dead.  If he never forgave me, it would be nothing less than what I deserved.

I shut off the TV when I heard the squeal of the water faucets being rotated shut.  I lifted my head from my hands when I heard the bathroom door open.

Duo emerged in nothing but a pair of clean shorts.  He had two flannels draped over his shoulders.  There was a brush in his hand.  He sat down on my right and passed it to me.

“I’m too tired to do it,” he explained and I gladly began my penance for my failure, wringing the water from his hair with one of the flannels.  I would not fail him again.  Anything he asked of me which would benefit him, I would do.

“It’s not your fault.”

My hands faltered when I realized he’d spoken.  I blinked.  “What?”

“What happened,” he said, turning toward me and skewering me with a look of such keen understanding that I felt it draw blood, “wasn’t your fault.”

I just gaped at him.

With shopping list dispassion, he continued, “You would have had to kill that Chang guy in order to come with us, but then the goons outside would have seen us on the roof with my dad before the chopper got there and we’d probably all be dead.  Or—”

The words were not spoken sharply, but they were sharp enough.  I gasped like I’d just been stabbed in the gut.

“If we’d waited until we heard the chopper and then released Chang, the tower still would have come down.  You and I could have made it through that gap but not… him.”

I closed my eyes.  My fingers curled into the flannel with vicious strength.

But Duo wasn’t finished ruthlessly exposing the futility of my self-blame.  “Or we could have brought Chang with us as a hostage.”

“Would that have worked?” I forced myself to ask.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “Probably not.  He was pissed at you.  He tried to fight you at the end even with the temple falling down around us.”  His hands fisted on his thighs.  “If he’d tripped you, shoved you off the ledge and into the gallery… I wouldn’t have been able to leave you there – no matter what – and then I’d have gotten my d— _him_ killed anyway.”  And himself right along with him.

I didn’t remind Duo that I was a good fighter, an _experienced_ fighter who was used to winning.  I could recognize potential resistance when I encountered it.  I knew how to tell if my opponent was skilled.  I’d known in the instant I’d captured him that Chang would have to be handled with care.  Or eliminated.  He wouldn’t give me any other choice in the matter.  But hindered as I’d been by my hesitance to take the man’s life with Duo looking on…  Ja, Chang might have managed to knock me off-balance, but still—

“I shouldn’t have let him go.  I should have killed him.”  I looked into Duo’s eyes as I said it.

“I should have hired an army.”  His smile was knowing, understanding, revealing.

Just like that, I was forgiven.  Duo knew that I’d be as able to kill in his presence as he’d be able to grossly devalue human life.  Both were impossible.  He knew that and, if the look on his face was any indication, he respected me for it.

Chest aching, throat clamped shut, eyes burning, I went back to wringing out the shower water from Duo’s hair, working until my hands were trembling from exhaustion instead of simply trembling.  He showed me how to brush his hair – “One handful at a time; start from the bottom and work your way up” – and it wasn’t until I was midway through that I realized I was crying.  My tears spilled hot and silent over my lashes but I did not allow them to interrupt my work.  When I was done, Duo took the brush from my hand and, grasping my wrists, pulled me to my feet.  I followed him into the bathroom where he stripped me down to my undershirt and shorts and turned on the shower.

He hauled my rucksack into the bathroom, kissed me on my wet, salty lips and said, “I’ll be waiting in other room.”

And when I got done washing away the dirt and tears, he was.  His hair was braided and tied back with the string from my jacket.  He watched me as I sat down on the bed and then he reached out a hand.  I took it and I wrapped myself around him like I was broken without him holding me together.

We didn’t talk.  Neither of us moved to turn on the TV or open the curtains.  We shared a bruised pear for breakfast.  For an early lunch, we ate the last of the rice I’d bought the day before.  We ignored the junk food I’d bought at the pharmacy.  We slept but, mostly, we just held on.

As I buried my face in the side of his neck yet again, I marveled.  I could not understand him: not his forgiveness or his uncanny ability to understand me, to know what I needed to hear, to do, to feel.

Oh God, I loved him.  It was all I could to not to tell him that, not to mingle that truth with the pain he was feeling now.  I wrestled with the impulse until a knock came at the door just after noon.

Although I was expecting it, I drew the hunting knife and kept it in my hand as I stood and moved to answer the door.  Duo scooped up his utility knife and rolled off the bed to crouch beside the bathroom wall, out of sight.

The voice which called through the door was vaguely familiar.  He used the code phrase I’d instructed Noventa to pass on.  I unlocked and – warily – opened the door.

“Mr. Darlian,” I greeted.

“Mr. Barton.”

I put the knife away, making no effort to conceal the action.  We shook hands.

This man from the London branch of the law firm was currently arranging for me to be given permission to enter and work in Britain just as Marshall Noventa was working on the American side of things.  At the time, I hadn’t understood the logic of applying to live and work in two countries simultaneously, but now I could see how useful it was going to be.  Lord Maxwell’s business was based in those two nations and Duo was probably the man’s sole heir.  With these documents, I’d be able to go wherever Duo went.

“Come in,” I invited, moving back.

Darlian did.  “Dominic?”

Standing up and tucking the utility knife away, Duo sighed.  “Thomas.”

He didn’t ask how Duo was feeling.  He didn’t ask if we’d seen the news or heard any word on the retrieval of Lord Maxwell’s body.  He placed his hands on Duo’s shoulders and said, “You cannot stay here, my lord.”

Duo flinched at the title.  As did I.  It was all I could do not to throw up on the stained carpet tiles.

I distracted myself from the churning in my nearly-empty guts by gathering up our things as Darlian gently but insistently bullied Duo toward the door.  “I’ve a car waiting downstairs and I’ve made a reservation for you at the Settha Palace.”

“No, I’ll stay here,” Duo said, surprising me.

Rather than look confused, Thomas Darlian gave Duo a sympathetic smile.  “I know you don’t want to leave, but you have a duty to perform.”

Something told me this was only the first of many.

“Trowa comes with me,” he dictated.

Darlian merely nodded.  “Of course.”

We took a private taxicab to a posh establishment that somehow looked both homey and enormous.  It also looked expensive.  It looked like the kind of place the son of a lord would choose in order to take refuge with his grief.  There was no check-in.  Darlian waved the lobby clerks away and we carried our own bags.

Our destination was a suite of rooms on the top floor.  A glimpse into the bathroom revealed an oversized bathtub with whirlpool jets.  The sitting room windows had both well-dusted blinds and starched curtains.  The hardwood floors were polished.  The television was digital: flat and widescreen.

It turned my stomach.

Darlian removed a black garment bag from the hall cupboard and passed it to Duo without a word.  I spotted a pair of black leather wingtip shoes resting on the floor inside.  Given the quality of the footwear alone, it was likely that the garment bag contained a suit that had cost more money than the entire Barton Troupe pulled in over the course of a good year.

“The press are asking for a statement,” Darlian said not unkindly.  “We’re expected at the British embassy within the hour.”

I stared at Duo, at his wrinkled T-shirt and dusty denims, at his stained takkies and the string holding his braid together.  I imagined what was in the bag: a mask, a role that had to be played.  I felt overwhelmed and it wasn’t even my life.

It struck me then that despite Duo’s attitude and street smarts, despite his charm and irreverent humor, he was a child of the privileged class.  Darlian didn’t have to coach him on how to maintain appearances.  I didn’t doubt that Duo would emerge in twenty minutes with a clean-shaven jaw, perfectly braided hair, and a pair of still-dry eyes.  As little as twenty minutes from now, I wasn’t going to have a place by his side anymore.

The very thought was unbearable.

Duo turned toward me and summoned a brave smile.  “It’s your job to recognize me when I come back out,” he said.  Before I could respond, he went into the bathroom to get changed.

It was a simple request, but it showed me the path I had to walk: I would stay with him no matter what; I would carry the memory of his goofy T-shirts and useless shoes with me; I would help him be real; I would not let him become lost in the world he was about to navigate.

The moment the bathroom door closed behind him and the latch caught, I turned to Thomas Darlian.

“What can I do for him?” I asked, bracing myself for the inevitable dismissal, readying myself to fight it with all my waning strength and untested cunning.

To my surprise, Darlian simply said, “Come downstairs.  The hotel has a tailor.  You’ll need a suit.”

It was a given that I didn’t have one in my rucksack.  I didn’t even know my size, but that was the tailor’s job, not mine.  I was more startled by Darlian’s easy acceptance of my presence.  As we took the lift down to the lobby, he volunteered, “Dominic has few true friends.”

That single statement was very telling.

“This puts you in a delicate situation,” he continued.  I met his sidelong glance and read a warning there.  “In the coming weeks and months, Dominic will be given a great deal of power and influence over the company.  Some might see his attachment to you as way to influence corporate policy.”

I thought about that for a moment before saying very deliberately, “Lord Dominic Maxwell and I are friends but, in the coming weeks and months, his associates will surely find him easier to approach than me.”

It suited me; I preferred to operate from the shadows.

Darlian smiled and nodded.  “Excellent.” 

Just before the lift arrived on the ground floor, he offered, “Our firm represents the Maxwell family first and foremost.  Unless Dominic himself wills it, no one will take his birthright from him in a corporate power play.”

I reached out and pushed the Stop button.  “Just so we’re clear, his life is his own.”

“Yes,” Darlian answered.  “And just so _we’re_ clear, you will let him decide his own future with your full support.”

I nodded.

When Darlian reached forward and reengaged the lift, I didn’t move to stop him.  I considered the warning he’d issued as we crossed the lobby and headed for an alcove of elegant shops.  Did Darlian really believe that I could change Duo’s mind about his own future?  A ball of hot indignation surged and rolled in my belly; I was offended on Duo’s behalf.  The man was seriously underestimating him.

I said nothing as Darlian announced our presence at the men’s boutique, summoning a member of the staff.  I let Darlian choose the color, style, and fabric of the suit and simply stood still for the fitting.  But I wasn’t idle; I was still thinking about Darlian, wondering about his true motivations and his perception of Duo: how well did he really know Duo?  Did he suspect that Duo would follow his interests in Egyptology or was he sure that Duo’s sense of duty would have him stepping into his father’s shoes at the company?  Darlian’s own vow to not interfere with Duo’s life was noticeably absent.  How far would he go to ensure that Duo chose the path which profited Darlian most?

As I lifted my arm in compliance with the tailor’s request, I glared at my reflection in the mirror; it was not _my_ interference in Duo’s life that was the issue here.

But the revelation changed nothing.  I’d already decided to follow Duo, only now I could see how much he might need me with him.  Darlian was well-versed in the art of subtle manipulations; I’d seen evidence of this already.  Given that men like him would likely soon be surrounding Duo, he’d need a companion who didn’t give rocks about corporations or profit margins, a companion who put Duo first and foremost.

I smiled grimly as I tried on the unfinished suit that was pressed into my hands; either Darlian had made a tactical mistake in alerting me to the kind of people Duo and I were about to encounter or he really was on Duo’s side in all this and had just taught me my first lesson on navigating high society.

We were told that the suit alterations would be complete within the hour so Darlian ushered me across the small arcade to a barber’s shop.  I’d never been inside one before.  All my life, the guys in the troupe had given each other haircuts whenever there was a need.  From the age of about ten, I’d trimmed my bangs myself, keeping them long enough to conceal half of my face.  It was harder for people to get a reading on me, to see me as a person.  I understood this well now, but when I was a boy, all I’d cared about was the fact that it kept civilians from asking bothersome questions about what a child was doing with a troupe of mercenaries.  And then, as I got older, it felt safe.  The veil it provided seemed to help me contain all the volatile emotions that would get me killed if I allowed them to distract me.

“Here,” Darlian said, pointing to a photograph of a man with a short cut very similar to his own.  It was a style that exposed the entire face.  “This one.”

“No,” I replied.  I had no intention of allowing my camouflage to be removed.  Now more than ever, I had to hide my true feelings for Duo from all the people who would gleefully try to use the knowledge for their own benefit.  Besides, my love was Duo’s and Duo’s _alone._   I was not going to let anyone else see something so private in my expression.

Darlian gently explained, “Mr. Barton, this, er, emo style is quite striking, true, but you wouldn’t want to give people the wrong idea.”

Ah, so we’d arrived at lesson number two: condescension as a means of manipulation.  Yes, I expected those larnies to talk down to me.  They might be wary of me once they learned of my background, but there was nothing about me that would demand their respect.

“I’ll handle this,” I told him, turning away and ending the discussion.  I didn’t tell him to leave – that was up to him – but his counsel was not welcome here.

Again, a flash of satisfaction twinkled in his brown eyes.  Having been raised by a man with a beard thicker than Darlian’s, it was easy to detect the almost-smile.  He retreated to the waiting area and pulled out his mobile phone, perhaps to check in with the office.

With gestures, I conveyed to the barber how I wanted my hair trimmed.  We hit a slight snag when the man fussed over my bangs.  His English was very broken, but the gist of it seemed to be that he wanted to thin out the hair so I could see through it more easily.  I tentatively agreed.

As it turned out, it was a good recommendation.  By the time he was done with the front, I was enjoying a better visual range than I could ever remember having.  My bangs were lighter, which meant that they’d be more prone to displacement due to the wind, but I’d take that concession in exchange for what I was gaining.  It was still impossible for anyone to see _through_ my hair, but now I could see _them._   I relished the tactical advantage.  The harder I was to read, the less inclined anyone would be to try to use me in their power games.  Anyone who did so would be undeniably reckless.

Just as the barber moved to start on the back, my phone buzzed.  I held up a hand to halt him as I pulled it from my pocket.

“Duo?” I asked quietly.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed.  “Where are you?”

My heart twinged at the thread of urgency in his voice.  “I’m not about to be forced onto an airplane out of the country,” I replied.

“Good.”  I heard the satisfaction in his tone.  “Because the Trowa I know wouldn’t put up with that kinda shit.”

I smiled and chose not to remind him that I probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere without my rucksack which was still upstairs in the room.  Instead, I answered his original question.  “I’m downstairs getting a haircut.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

He chuckled.  “Am I gonna recognize you when you get all done?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I hate waiting.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Look, Tro, my life’s about to get crazy and I…”

“Don’t worry about it.  Darlian’s been giving me lessons.  It’s all under control.”

“Really?  This I have to see.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, nesting a reassurance inside the invitation for him to get his arse down here and enjoy the show.

He was silent for a moment and I knew that he’d sussed out my meaning.  Both of them.  “You have a way of making offers a guy can’t refuse,” he finally said.

I shifted in the barber’s chair as a hot tingle zipped through my entire body.  God what that tone of voice did to me…  “I’ll see you soon,” I promised.

“I’ll see you sooner.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Goof,” I accused.

He chuckled and hung up.  I apologized to the barber and the man got back to work.  With my chin tilted down to give him access to the back of my neck, I had the perfect opportunity to scheme a bit.  On the phone, Duo had almost sounded like himself.  I wasn’t sure if it was due to the relief that I wasn’t in the process of being invited out of his life or if he’d given himself a talking-to while in the bathroom.  Or there was a third possibility: it was part of the mask.  If it was, then eventually it was going to shatter.

Bugger all.

When the barber finally nudged my head up, I spotted Duo out of the corner of my eye.  He was standing in the waiting area, leaning irreverently against a squat, polished bookcase and ignoring the array of colorful magazines laid out upon its surface.  His arms were crossed and a crooked but wan grin was bending his lips.  The instant I saw him, I forgot about his little game of who-sees-whom first.

Oh God, he was lekker.  That suit had been made to mold to him from shoulders to hips.  The double row of buttons down the front of it only emphasized his trim build.  I gritted my teeth and admitted that black was definitely a good color for him.  The pale grey dress shirt and matching lapel handkerchief highlighted the necktie which was just a shade lighter than his eyes and somehow drew my attention directly to his gaze.

I had to look away before I started sweating beneath the barbers cape.  Only five more minutes of suffering was required of me and then the clippings were blow-dried away.  I paid the barber and tipped him well for his patience when I’d answered Duo’s call.

“Looks good,” Duo approved when I joined him and Darlian at the front of the shop.

“Your suit isn’t ready yet,” Darlian remarked as I tried not to blush under Duo’s appreciative stare, “but we need to pick out a few shirts and ties.”

So that’s what we did.  As for shirts, I ended up with a white, a cream, and a dusty brown which I was partial to.  It would help with camouflage.  Three ties joined the pile on the sales counter: a khaki-and-brown stripe, a somber black with tiny grey dots, and a swirling pattern of tan, blue, and green which looked almost musical.  The latter was Duo’s choice and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to put it back.  I’d never wear it; it was sure to draw attention.

Duo and I both added other essentials: undershirts, shorts, and socks.  Last were the shoes.  I insisted on ones with good tread and tried not to pay attention to the price.  I thought of the roll of American dollars that Martins had given me and imagined the look on his face if I told him _this_ was what I’d used it for.

“I’ve got this,” Duo told me softly as the cost of the items was added up.

I drew a breath to object.

“You bought the knives,” he reminded me so quietly that Darlian couldn’t possibly overhear him.  “It’s my turn to get the battle gear.”

He had a point.  In the jungle or desert, when we were expecting to face combat, it made sense for me to handle the provisions and logistics.  We were now heading into a situation just as volatile but in different ways so it required different preparations, preparations which Duo was familiar with.

“Thank you,” I said.

He shifted next to me, brushing my hand in a gesture that could have been accidental.  “We look after each other.”

By the time the clerk was done ringing us up, my suit was finished.  I went to get changed.  Darlian handed me the off-white shirt and striped tie without a word and I took his suggestions.  If I was going to be standing beside Duo when he gave his statement to the press, Darlian would know how to ensure that I was invisible enough.

I took a moment in the fitting room to remove the hunting knife sheath from the belt I’d bought in the market and tear the utility knife sheath off of the cheap leather.  As I threaded the new belt through my trouser belt loops, I positioned the hunting knife against my back.  The utility knife was tucked down the inside of my new, navy sock above my ankle.  Good enough for now.  I’d have to work on a harness for it later.  If we were here that long.

I left the jacket unbuttoned to better hide the presence of the hunting knife and provide quick access to it.  I didn’t even attempt to knot the tie.  Shoving my stockinged feet into my new shoes, I stepped out.  Duo held open an empty plastic shopping bag and I dropped my old boots and clothes inside.

“I don’t know how to tie it,” I said when Duo’s gaze snagged on the accessory that was hanging around my neck like a shed snakeskin.

Darlian took the plastic bag from Duo plus the others containing our purchases.  “I’ll have these sent up to the room,” he offered and Duo stepped forward to show me what to do.  I felt a small thrill as his nimble fingers tugged the knot out of his own necktie and then he turned me toward the shop mirrors.  Shoulder to shoulder, he talked me through the procedure as we both stared at our reflections.

“There,” Duo said, tucking the knot snuggly up into his own collar.  I copied the motion.  He gave my reflection a thorough evaluation.  “I’d say you were a natural at this, but it’s just not the sort of thing that comes naturally to anyone.”

I took heart in that and glanced sideways at him.  Suddenly, I noticed there was something different about him.  “You didn’t braid your hair,” I observed.

“Oh, yeah.  This was how my mom always did it when we had something formal to go to.”

I dared to trail a fingertip over the plethora of brown bands which held his hair back in a series of cascading ponytails, gathering the tresses not-too-tightly into one bunch at the back of his neck.  There were more bands in his hair below that, spaced every four inches or so, to keep his hair from getting in the way.  Worn like this, it was a few inches longer than his braid.

Sexy as hell.

“It’s nice,” I said, trying for a casual tone.  I failed.

Duo looked at me and gave me a conspiratorial smile.  “Now you know how I feel about that smile of yours, Tro.”

The urge to kiss him was almost overwhelming, but just then Darlian returned and reality intruded.  “They’re waiting for us at the British embassy,” he announced and we went out to the car he’d hired.

“What have you told them?” Duo asked as we pulled out of the hotel drive.

Darlian filled us in on the story they’d given the embassy:

Duo, having witnessed his father’s abduction, had immediately called Marshall Noventa, who had then contacted the embassy and arranged for Darlian to fly to Laos as soon as possible.  When no ransom demand had been issued, Duo had urged Noventa to have the temple, Wat Dong Sao, checked.  Duo’s father had proposed this trip because he’d believed the site to be valuable and it was possible that he might have been targeted for kidnapping because of what he’d hoped to find there.

And then the television networks entered the tale:

They had picked up on the story when the temple had been located and found to have collapsed very recently.  Now, the entire world was following the recovery effort as people speculated whether the collapse could have anything to do with Lord Maxwell’s disappearance.  No one knew where the kidnappers were or if Lord Maxwell had actually made the trip out into the jungle and been inside the temple when the structure had fallen.  At the moment, the man was still missing.

That was the story.

But both Duo and I knew the truth; we _knew_ it, but couldn’t let on that we knew.  Which meant that Duo wouldn’t be allowed to grieve until his father’s body had been publically found and identified.  Suddenly, I understood his lack of reaction.  He was saving it up, keeping it deep inside and waiting for the moment when he’d be permitted to let it go.

Oh God.

What was more, we could not let the whole truth be known.  We couldn’t mention Heero Yuy or the helicopter.  That would invite all sorts of questions.  Questions about why we’d gone there on a rescue mission ourselves when the police had already been informed of Lord Maxwell’s abduction.  While it seemed fairly obvious to us who the culprit had been and what his motivation was, we had no actual proof that Khushrenada had hired those men to abduct Duo’s father and I doubted the police here would manage to find any evidence of it, either.  A man like Khushrenada had not become so successful by making mistakes.

Amazingly, Duo had sussed all this out, had known to keep quiet and wait for the lawyers.

With Thomas Darlian sitting in the front seat and the driver’s view restricted to the rear window behind our shoulders, I didn’t hesitate to drop my hand to the bench seat between us in offering.  A moment later, even though Duo was staring intently out the window on his side of the car, I felt his palm slide against mine and his fingers fit between my own.  I held on.

I had to let go when we arrived, but I stayed close, watching the crowd as Darlian took point and led Duo over to the collection of microphones that had been set up.  I stood back, trying not to tense at every flash and shutter click, and watched as Duo drew a deep breath.

“Thank you all for coming here today and bringing with you the support of the international community.”  There was no trace of his usual, casual American speech pattern or slang.  He did not have his statement written out.  There were no note cards or sheets of wrinkled notebook paper in his hands to which he referred.  Dominic Maxwell spoke without those aids.

He continued, “Your prayers and well-wishes mean a lot to both my father, Victor Townsend Maxwell, and myself.”  He paused again and took another breath.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Laotian authorities for their efforts to locate him.  I’d also like to thank the British embassy for working on my father’s behalf to bring him ho—me.”

At this point, Duo glanced up at the sky and swallowed thickly.  I ached for him, with him.  _Oh God, Duo…_   His father was never coming home again.  He knew it and I knew it, but admitting it would gain us nothing but questions we couldn’t answer.

When he was composed again, he addressed the public’s speculations: “I still haven’t heard from my father.  There have not been any ransom demands that I’m aware of since his abduction on Monday night.  If anyone has any information on my father’s whereabouts or the men who took him, I urge you to contact the authorities, either the Laotian police force, the British embassy, or Mr. Thomas Darlian—”  Duo looked toward the man.  “—our family attorney.”

Duo stopped again.  He shook his head slowly in defeat.  “I’m sure you have questions, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can tell you about the situation.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ll speak with the embassy and ask if there’s been any news.”

As Duo took a step back, I stepped forward.  I kept a professional distance between us and I saw the way the reporters discounted me as merely a member of the Maxwell family’s staff or perhaps his bodyguard.  Darlian took up position behind the microphones, reiterating Duo’s speech: thanking the reporters for coming and promising to keep them updated.  He also urged them to share any information they might have.  “A man’s life may depend on it,” he summarized.

Duo turned his face away and I had to fist my hand to keep from pulling him into my arms.  Later.  I’d be able to hold him later.  For now, all I could do was wish and will some of my meager strength into him.

Darlian retreated from the limelight and joined us at the embassy entrance.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to follow Duo inside – not with the knives I was carrying – but I intended to stay with him right up until the metal detectors blocked my path.  A step behind us, I heard Darlian answer his mobile phone.  I hadn’t heard it ring, but that only meant he’d set it to vibrate.

“Yes?” he prompted the caller.  A moment later, he reached out a hand to Duo’s shoulder.  “Dominic, wait.  You need to hear this.”  And then he handed the phone to Duo.  There was nothing I could do for him as he was informed that his father’s body had been found.  We were out in the open with reporters looking on and cameras trained on us.  Yesterday, I wouldn’t have cared; I would have pulled Duo into my arms and to hell with anyone watching.  But from this moment onward, Duo was _Lord_ Dominic Maxwell and, because of that, I had to stand here and watch his fingers tighten around the phone; I had to watch him fight against his tears; I had to watch and do _nothing._

“I’m taking him back to the car,” I told Darlian.  When Duo lowered the phone from his ear, I passed it back to its owner and nodded to the still-gathered crowd.  “Will you handle this?”

“Yes, of course,” he replied thickly, clearly affected, and I wondered if he’d still been holding out hope that I’d exaggerated the seriousness of the situation to Noventa.  Well, it wasn’t anything to do with me if he had.  I placed a professional hand on Duo’s shoulder and, angling myself between him and the public as best I could, I led him over to the car.  I nudged him into the backseat, ordered the driver back to the hotel, and held onto Duo’s hand during the journey.  Upon our arrival, I steered Duo away from the main doors and took him upstairs via a side entrance that I’d noticed earlier.

The opulence of the room Darlian had chosen and the expense of our clothing was all so much nonsense now.  The moment the door shut behind us, I drew him to me, thankful to finally be able to do so and resentful that I’d had to wait so long in the first place.

He shuddered, gasping for breath.  Perhaps he was trying to catch the very same one that he’d been holding onto so tightly all throughout the ride back.  His hands gripped my shoulders from behind with bruising force, but he did not weep.  Perhaps that was one more thing I did on his behalf; I nuzzled against his hair as my own eyes burned and overflowed.  His ear caught several of my tears.

“I’m so sorry,” he rasped suddenly.

“What?”

“I didn’t give you a choice.”

“A choice?”  He wasn’t making any sense.  If he’d actually convinced himself that he’d hauled me to Laos unwillingly—

“If I’d just gotten on a Goddamn plane or gone to the embassy like you’d told me to…”

I nearly gasped – my understanding was so sharp and sudden.  Duo had forgiven me for failing him and his father, but he had not forgiven himself.

I pulled back and tilted his chin up so I could study his reddened-but-still-dry eyes.  I’d seen a lot of miserable things in my lifetime and I’d seen a lot of misery.  I’d even caused some of it.  But, somehow, it felt like I was seeing soul-deep pain for the first time.

“Duo, you loved him.  I knew you couldn’t leave.”  Any more than I could have left _Duo_ behind.

“I wasn’t qualified to try an’ save him.  I should have—”

Yes, if the situation had been typical, then professionals – people who were capable and impartial and efficient – would have been the better choice.  But the situation had _not_ been typical at all.

“What would Khushrenada have done if he’d been caught in the act by the authorities?” I asked him.  “You know what powerful men are like, how far they’ll go to ensure more power.  Do you honestly think your father would’ve had any chance at all if we’d approached the situation by conventional means?”

Duo’s father had appeared to have been tortured and he could have named Khushrenada as the man behind his abduction.  He could have provided a motive backed by circumstantial evidence.  If Khushrenada had been cornered thusly, would he have not only ruined Lord Maxwell’s life but Duo’s as well?

As things stood now, there was only a single motive for why Khushrenada would have ordered Lord Maxwell’s abduction and it sounded positively befok.  Without physical evidence or a money trail or credible witnesses, no one would believe that Khushrenada had participated in Lord Maxwell’s kidnapping.  Khushrenada was safe from discovery which meant that Duo was safe from his retribution, but that didn’t mean he was safe from the man’s scheming.  Khushrenada hadn’t gotten his hands on the artifact he was seeking and Chang had seen the message on the wall: Duo’s name written in hieroglyphs.  The arrow now pointed to _him._

Some of my fear must have made it into my expression because Duo shook me slightly.  “What?”

“You have to watch your back,” I whispered.  “Chang knows about the message from your mother.  Khushrenada will try to get to you.”  Especially if he were told about the iPod that had been left behind in the artifact’s place.  I hoped we could trust Yuy not to betray that discovery, but it would be more prudent to assume otherwise.

Duo nodded.  “I know.”

How could he be so bloody calm about this?  “Can you trust Darlian and Noventa and all the other people in their firm?”  Any one of them could be a saboteur.

Dropping his voice to a whisper, Duo said, “I trust _you.”_

I let out a long breath as the weight of his trust settled upon my shoulders and dug into my heart.  “It’s not June yet…” I began.

“I’ll have Noventa work out a December clause or something.”  He shifted, stepping back and looking suddenly uncertain.  “I mean, if you still wanna come to the States with me.  I wouldn’t blame you if you said to hell with this shit and just—”

I kissed him.  It was rough and I demanded entrance to his mouth.  He grasped my arms, but he didn’t push me away.  He pulled himself closer.  Tearing my lips away from his warmth and taste, I growled, “If I have a choice, I will always choose you.  Always.”

He shivered.  I felt it through the layers of fabric.

“It’s not fair that I need you this much,” he replied.

“What makes you think I need you any less?”

He shook his head.  “No, I mean it’s not fair to _you.”_

A flash of anger exploded through me.  “My life was pointless before we met.”

“That doesn’t give me the right to pull you into this freak show.”

I sighed out my irritation.  I framed his face in my hands.  “I only see you.  No freaks, just you.”

“But they’ll see _you,”_ he warned.  He looked tired, wary, determined.  He looked older than his eighteen years.  “You’ll need a helluvalot more than a new suit and a haircut.”

“This is your jungle,” I replied slowly and deliberately.  “I know you’ll handle the provisions.”

He let out a breath and smiled.  “What did I ever do to earn your trust?”  The question came out in a wondering tone, as if he couldn’t quite believe his own good fortune.

I leaned forward until our foreheads touched.  “You gave me yours,” I answered simply.

“That’s all?” he squeaked incredulously.

I nodded.

“Damn.  I had no idea I was so devious.”

I chuckled.  And although I hadn’t known him well, I suspected that somewhere in that Great Beyond Duo’s father was equally amused.

Just then, when I would have kissed him again, my stomach growled and I winced guiltily.

“I’ll order us up something,” he offered, glancing toward the phone and the room service menu beside it.

“The coffee’s probably better in the restaurant downstairs,” I argued gently, wondering if he was up for that.  The lines of stress and grief had momentarily retreated from his face, but I didn’t for one moment think they were gone completely.  I probably wasn’t doing him any favors by offering a distraction from his pain, but I couldn’t bring myself to encourage him to sit around in this room with the memories of his helplessness.

“You buyin’?” he teased.

“Ja.”

It was almost a date, but I was glad it wasn’t.  This was another first that I did not want to mar with misery and regret.  I ordered whatever Duo got and stared down anyone who looked at him a half second too long.

“Ease up or they’re gonna think you really are my goon,” Duo muttered through a mysterious little grin which he promptly hid behind his glass.

“That’s my dream job,” I retorted and offered him my serviette when he choked on his water.  He hacked and muttered into the linen, his eyes watering.  Somehow I knew when the moisture turned into actual tears.

“Don’t make me tell you another one,” I threatened despite the fact that I had nil to back it up with.

He sobbed out a breathy chuckle.  “You look like the kinda guy who’d have an arsenal.”

I choked on a bubble of dark humor but could think of nothing else to say.

He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out.  “This is embarrassing,” he grumbled into the serviette.

“You’re welcome to use my shoulder instead,” I informed him quietly, “but you might have to sacrifice drool territory to boogey invasion.”

He laughed.  “Damn it, knock it off, Tro,” he commanded unevenly.  I stayed silent as he worked on getting his emotions back under control.  When he tried to sniffle the snot back up into his head, I scraped my chair legs across the floor in an attempt to camouflage the sound.

He lowered the serviette but didn’t look me in the eye.  “Planning your escape?”

The teasing came out so flat I could have laid out spent shell casings lengthwise on it and trusted them not to roll off.  “Preventing yours.”

“Ah.  So that’s why you got the shoes with tread.”  This was said as he folded up the linen and set it off to the side of his place setting.  Had I been faced with the same problem, I probably would have balled it up and stuffed it under an overturned coffee cup.

“The plot is exposed.”

His fingers twitched toward the serviette he’d just set aside.  He nearly groaned, “You did not just give me that opening.  No, definitely not.”

I was certain I had, but I supposed now was not the time or place for him to do anything about it.  I couldn’t stop myself from stringing the words together – _exposed, opening, give_ – in a sequence that unlocked the memory of Duo’s hand sliding down the front of my unfastened pants.  I was helpless to resist the tide of arousal that slammed through me from the base of my spine all the way up to my scalp in a tingling rush.  Bugger and fuck.  I thought about asking for my serviette back as I shifted awkwardly in my chair.

Duo wordlessly passed me one of the still-unused serviettes at our table-for-four.  The gesture spoke volumes.  It told me that Duo was thinking the same thing I was.  If he’d met my gaze just then, I don’t know what I would have done.  As it was, I was struggling not to growl, not to toss the table aside and take him down to the floor right here.  Fuck.  What did he do to me?

I glared at him as he stared out the window beside our table, his lashes still clumped with dampness, his jaw clenched, the weariness seeping back into his features with every passing moment.  Seeing that, I let go of the sudden, choking aggression.

Sighing, I scanned the restaurant again.  No one seated at any of the tables was looking at us, but the same could not be said for the man stepping into the restaurant from the hotel lobby.  “Darlian’s here,” I said.

“Wave him over,” Duo requested quietly, keeping both elbows braced on the table.  He was still wearing his suit but this was a posture for T-shirts, denims, and canvas takkies.

I complied and let him have another moment to gather his composure.  Darlian nodded in acceptance of the invitation and approached our table with confidence that had a server following in his wake, a menu in one hand and a decanter of mineral water in the other.  He sat at the place setting with the last available serviette, plucking the artfully folded white linen off of the china plate before either Duo or I could lay claim to it.

It would have been funny at any other time.  I might have nudged Duo’s shoe with the toe of mine underneath the table and shared the joke.  I would have grinned.  He would have chuckled.  I bit back a sigh.  So much loss, past and present.

Darlian didn’t talk about the recovery of Lord Maxwell’s body.  I suspected he had been updated, but I was relieved that he didn’t give Duo a report on it here.

“Thomas, how’s your daughter?” Duo asked suddenly, still keeping his drying eyes downcast.  It was at least two hours before sunset and, in this lighting, it was easy to see that he’d been crying.  “Has she made partner yet?”

Darlian smiled with sympathy and graciously replied, no doubt recognizing the conversational detour for what it was, “Not quite yet, but you know how driven Relena is.  It’s only a matter of time.”

Duo had gone to London with his father several times since I’d met him, but he’d always glossed over the details.  I’d assumed he’d gone to England to visit family.  But no, it seemed that those trips had been mainly for business.  Although it wasn’t said, I gathered from the flow of the unfolding conversation that Duo had accompanied his father in order to observe the workings of the company and to meet with Darlian.  The easy way they spoke of London and acquaintances there told me just how far into the loop Duo’s father had led him.

The revelation was both welcome and not.  Welcome because Duo already knew who our potential allies and adversaries were.  Unwelcome because Duo was that much closer to being trapped in a life of corporate minutiae.

Which prompted me to ask quietly, certain that my question was as doff as they come, “What _is_ your family’s business?”

Darlian was surprised enough to pause as he lifted his teacup to his lips.  Duo continued slowly spinning his untouched coffee around and around in its saucer.  “Haven’t Goggled me yet?” he teased.

I tilted my head to the side in acknowledgement of the point.  “Not yet.”

Darlian seemed suddenly interested in the contents of his cup.  He was calculating, reevaluating.  He’d assumed something about me in error.  I was curious as to what it was, but not curious enough to take my eyes off of Duo and ask.

“We’re gonna have to get around to that Internet tutorial real soon,” he observed ruefully.  “You’re missing out on Twitter, man, and that’s just not right.”

A soft chuckle escaped through my helpless grin.

Duo smirked back and then shoved his cup and saucer aside, clearing the table and slipping into a mode I hadn’t seen since Egypt: Duo was going to educate me.  Never one to make me ask twice for information or willfully conceal it from me, he explained, “Back when my great-great grandfather started it up, Maxwell Limited focused on engineering and manufacturing precision scientific equipment.  Over the generations, as science expanded, so did the company.  Optics, lasers, prosthetics, medical equipment…  Hell, half the stuff in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider was designed and manufactured by the company.”

“CERN?”  _Large Had—what?_

Again, Duo jumped in before Darlian could sputter in shock at my ignorance.  “It’s Europe’s nuclear research organization.  A coupla years ago, they built the world’s largest physics experiment: the Large Hadron Collider.  It’s this twenty-seven-kilometer-long underground track thing where they smash atoms and stuff together and see what kind of bang they get.”

“For what purpose?” I pressed, momentarily distracted from my original question.

“Well, it has something to do with trying to understand the stuff that makes up the universe.  There’s no practical application yet, but when there is I’m pretty sure Maxwell Limited will be expanding in that sector, too.”  Duo shrugged.  “Science isn’t really my thing.”

“As well,” I readily admitted, but the work his company did sounded important… and profitable.  It also sounded like it was at the forefront of new technologies.  It sounded like it was going to require a lot of time and effort from its leaders for the company to keep up in the global marketplace.  Time and effort that Duo would be expected to give.  This was not a comforting development.

“This nuclear research of CERN’s,” I began hesitantly, my thoughts turning to our foremost enemy, “is it for weapons?”

“Pure research only,” Darlian assured me.

I kept my eyes on Duo.  He glanced at Darlian and then shrugged.  “Einstein didn’t set out to build a bomb.  You never know where research is gonna lead.”

The way he said it made it sound like we’d be better off without it, but that would be like screaming up at the sky until the sun stopped shining.  There would be no stopping progress, not until we destroyed ourselves.

Dinner tasted like ash in my mouth and the coffee burned my stomach as if I were drinking pure acid.  It was a relief to pay the bloody bill and go back upstairs.

“I’m next door,” Darlian said, nodding to the room down the hall.

Duo nodded.  “See ya in the morning.”

Darlian watched me as Duo fumbled with the key card.  Even if I hadn’t given Noventa my word that I’d keep Duo safe, Darlian’s stare wouldn’t have kept from Duo’s side, day or night.

“C’mon, Tro.  Those new shoes have gotta be killing your feet.”

I followed Duo into the suite of rooms.

“Let’s get the tub goin’,” he suggested, disappearing into the bathroom without bothering to take his shoes off first.

I engaged the safety bolt on the door behind me and aimed for the nearest bed.  Duo was right: my feet were raw in places, possibly blistered.  Sitting down in the restaurant for an hour had only left them sensitized to the slightest pressure.

“Oi!” Duo called.

“What?”

“Are we gonna do this or not?”

I blinked.  “Do what exactly?”  What did Duo think he and I were going to do in a bathtub together?

A plethora of ideas answered that seemingly innocent inquiry.  I had to grit my teeth and fist my hands.  It took a solid minute and no less than three deep breaths before I could open my eyes and actually see my surroundings rather than pale, bare skin and long, loosened hair.

There was a clatter as one shoe and then the other was tossed out of the bathroom doorway, rolling into the open cupboard across the narrow foyer.  “Get in here, man.  You need this.  Trust me.”

Oh God.  He had _no_ idea.

As if in a daze, I stood and crossed the room back to the open doorway.  Looking in, however…

I burst out laughing.

Duo was perched on the edge of the tub in his jacket, shirt, tie, and bloody lapel handkerchief.  The only articles of clothing he’d shed were the socks which were lying on the tile floor like a pair of deflated animal balloons.  His bound hair dangled down his back and his trouser legs were rolled up past his knees.  Water gushed from the faucet into the basin where his feet were being massaged by the jets.

He patted the ledge beside him.  “What were you expecting?” he teased.

I bit my lip and gave his pale legs a pointed glance.  “More of a tan.”

“I put the ‘white’ in ‘white boy’.”  He said it as if it were a source of pride.

I rolled my eyes and braced myself in the doorway as I pried my sore and sweaty feet out of my shoes.  I tossed the utility knife onto the bathroom counter.  My too-thin and uselessly non-absorbent men’s socks joined his on the floor.  After a few turns of the hem of my trouser legs, I was splashing my feet into the tub beside his.

I groaned.

“Told ya.”

Oh God yes, he had.  It wasn’t quite as good as what I’d originally imagined he’d intended to do in here, but it was every bit as visceral.  The water was hot and frothing and as soon as it was foaming around our calves, Duo shut off the tap.

“I guess first class isn’t all bad,” he mused suddenly, forcing another bark of laughter out of me.

“Except for those bloody scented hot towels.”

He guffawed.  “No shit, right?  I mean, who the hell wants their face to smell like lemon and shit?”

“Shit might be preferable to lavender.”

He chuckled.  “Depends on the shit, I think.  Now, pig shit?”  He shook his head.  “I’ll take lavender every time.”

We stretched our feet out in the massaging water currents and I compared my own darker skin and leg hair to his.  I had to curl my fingers around the edge of the tub to keep from investigating the trail of droplets leading up to the pale knee which was closest.

I could only sit there and do nothing for about ten minutes.  Duo’s presence beside me was too magnetic.  When he started pulling the bands out of his hair, I made myself get out of the tub and dry off.  My new suit was hanging up in the cupboard and I’d already changed into my sleep pants and a long sleeved T-shirt when Duo decided he’d had enough foot therapy.

“We need to do laundry,” he observed as he stared into his rucksack, wrinkling his nose with revulsion.

“We’ll take care of it in the morning.”  There had to be a facility for that in this bloody place.  Unless it was far too practical an amenity to be welcome in a hotel of this caliber.  I sat down on one of the two beds in the room and looked everywhere but at Duo as he got changed and tossed his suit over the back of the nearest chair with a soft, “Fuck it.”  I was reaching back to dig my pillow out from under the quilt when Duo’s weight joined mine on the mattress.

I turned toward him and waited for him to speak.

“Is this OK?” he eventually asked, clasping his hands between his bare knees.  He was wearing those doff plaid shorts that looked about four sizes too big for him and the Grouch T-shirt was enjoying an encore performance.  “It’s gonna screw with my head if I wake up alone.”

When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “My first thought’s probably gonna be ‘oh, hotel bed’ which’ll make me remember that I’m on vacation and then I’ll roll over expecting to see—”  He paused and glanced at the second, untouched bed.  “But he won’t be there.  It’s just easier if I…  I mean, you’re the only person I’ve ever spent the night with.  Well, since Solo and I were kids, but that camping trip was a disaster anyway and—”

I reached out and touched his shoulder.  “Duo.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go to sleep.”

He blew out a long breath.  “OK.”

When Duo moved to settle into the bed I’d claimed, I stepped over to the second and pulled the quilt and sheet loose.  I mussed the pillow.  Before Duo could ask, I returned to the bed I’d initially chosen and slid in beside him.  I rolled toward him without a word and put an arm around his waist even as I tucked the sheathed hunting knife beneath my pillow.

“You’ve thought of everything, huh?” Duo observed, noting the evidence I’d just manufactured across the room.  It didn’t take much of an effort to make a bed looked slept-in.

I snuggled down against him, careful not to put my weight on his rebraided hair.  After a bit of wiggling I managed to angle my nose so that I was breathing in his warmth and scent, my lips nearly touching the pulse that trembled beneath the skin of his throat.  “Hm,” I agreed absently, wondering if I should apologize in advance for my morning wood.

He chuckled.  “You sleep with other people often?”

“Nuh-uh,” I grunted, basking in the heat that was seeping into me from his body.

“You’re a natural.”

“Sleeping’s natural,” I mumbled.

“Yeah.”  His chuckle was the last thing I heard.

The next morning, I woke before he did and grimaced at the wet patch on the fabric over my shoulder.  Duo drool.  Or tears.  Looking at his face, it was hard to tell which.  He was dead to the world, not even twitching when I carefully extracted myself from his side.  Once things in my shorts calmed down enough to allow it, I took care of my full bladder then got on with the business of doing laundry.  I put on my suit again and went to reconnoiter the hotel.  I was not pleased to discover that the only way to get clean clothing was by using a laundry _service._   Did all larny hotels like this insist on humiliating their customers?

Regardless of the humiliation, it had to be done, so I followed the front desk clerk’s instructions and separated Duo’s clothes and mine into the designated plastic laundry bags and left them for whoever to do whatever with.  Hopefully, they’d be wearing gloves when they did it.

There wasn’t much to be done other than that.  I connected our mobile phones to their chargers, flipped through the room service menu, and plotted how I was going to dispose of the knives I’d bought when it came time to head for the airport.  Eventually, there was nothing else to do except go back to bed.  I draped my suit pants and dress shirt over the other bed and laid down next to Duo in my underpants and undershirt.

God, he was so warm.  I’d never realized how warm people were, or how arms were meant to curve over someone else’s chest, how hips could fit together like spoon-in-spoon.

“Hm… Tro?”

I smiled and nodded against his messy braid.  “It’s early yet.”

He relaxed back against me and I felt his hand grasp mine, tugging it up to the center of his chest and locking me in place around him.  I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to.  And I most definitely did not want to.

My brows twitched into a frown at that thought.  Darlian didn’t seem to be in any hurry to dislodge me from Duo’s side, nor did Noventa, but I couldn’t count on everyone to be so complacent.  I was lying in bed with Lord Dominic Maxwell, heir to a massively profitable, international corporation.  There could be any number of people who wouldn’t want me here for any number of reasons: I was a man; I was a mercenary; I was unschooled; I was an outsider; I was unable to match Duo in wealth or social standing.

I was also ignorant.

I inched closer to Duo as a thrill of fear shot through me.  I knew how to cut down an enemy who threatened my life, who threatened the lives of the men in my troupe, who threatened the lives and property of our clients.  I knew how to kill, how to maim, how to disable and disorient.  I knew how to use my hands and their manmade extensions – guns and knives, garrotes and clubs – to defend and protect.  I knew how to intimidate and threaten.

I did not know how to fight with kind words, with legal maneuvers, with smiles and handshakes.  A nebulous fear settled deep within me: could these people separate us?  Could they use guile and turn Duo against me?  Was there anything I could do to make sure that didn’t happen?  Was there any way I could guarantee that Duo would continue to trust me no matter how sophisticated a trap they set?

Beside me, Duo stirred and I had to close my eyes.  I took all my uncertainty and buried it.  Until I knew what to do, I’d do the only thing I could do: I’d keep trusting him and keep hoping that it earned me his trust in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name “Thomas Darlian” is from Clara Barton’s “A Life Less Normal”. He looks like a Thomas to me, so I pinched it. The name “Marshall Noventa” comes from the character’s official military title in the original series: Field Marshal Noventa. I know: it’s soooo creative.
> 
> Also, the Maxwells were an actual titled family (i.e., lords) in Scotland. Their stronghold was Caerlaverock Castle which is in ruins now but EPIC. Google or Wiki it. You’ll see what I mean. Also, the Clan Maxwell coat of arms is so awesome. Look that up, too, while you’re surfing the ‘Net.


	6. Appearances, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following is (probably) a completely unnecessary note about “my” Trowa: he’s a mercenary, and he understands that emotions are things you can’t control, but they have to be dealt with otherwise they’ll present more problems further down the road. So, when he’s sad or overwhelmed, he cries and just gets it all out so that he can pick himself up and get on with business. Duo, while very dynamic and less self-controlled than Trowa, is the exact opposite; he only recognizes the emotions that he judges to be acceptable and, at this point in the story, he is convinced that grief is not OK. He is holding it all in and it will come out. In a big way. Actually, Duo’s grief will drive the story to its conclusion, so we have not yet even begun to see him deal with his father’s death. So, enjoy the ride.
> 
> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Trowa POV
> 
> Theme music: "Angel with a Shotgun" by The Cab

Darlian and Noventa handled all the arrangements.  Duo had only had to answer one question: “Where would you like your father to be buried?”

“Next to my mom,” he’d said and then Darlian had gotten on his mobile to sort it out.

Duo had declined to speak to the press again although that hadn’t stopped representatives from several networks from leaving messages with the hotel staff for him.  Darlian warned us against leaving the hotel premises as there was always at least one camera crew camped out on the main street, waiting on the off-chance we’d emerge and give them an opening for their scoop of misery.  I could see them from our window.  It was just as well I hadn’t had a gun.

I made it a point to keep the hotel suite curtains closed.

“Afraid someone’s gonna see me do this?” Duo teased, leaning in and blowing softly in my ear.  I jerked and the curtain rippled in my grasp.  My breath caught.  Since Darlian’s arrival, I’d been clinging to my composure and control with every ounce of strength I possessed.  This very early morning, after nearly two continuous days of torment, I snapped.

“No,” I retorted, “but I am afraid someone’s going to interrupt me when I do _this!”_

With a twist, a shove, and a hand clamped over Duo’s mouth to keep his squeak of surprise from echoing in the room, I had him on his back on the bouncing mattress.  I straddled him, grinning victoriously.

Duo’s hands gripped my forearms but not to push me away.  He was holding on.  Nudging his chin out from under my palm, he grinned back.  “Interrupt _what?”_ he challenged, his eyes flashing with fire.

It had been like this with him over the last few days: soul-crushing grief one moment, heart-stopping boyish charm the next.  Combine that with his mesmerizingly somber lectures and unpredictably irreverent humor and was it any wonder I was feeling increasingly confused?  I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me.  Perhaps he didn’t even know.  Well, I hoped that when he sussed it out, he’d tell me.  Until then, I wasn’t planning on going any further from him than absolutely necessary.

But now, _now_ I had him under me and he was urging me on.  Oh God, _yes._

I didn’t answer his taunt with words.  I framed his face in my hands and leaned down to press my lips to his.  He breathed out an encouraging sound, shifting up against me as his fingers dug into the fabric of my suit sleeves.  We were due down in the lobby.  Darlian was probably waiting for us, eager to get us both to the airport, but we had a moment.  We _needed_ a moment.  And I was taking it.

He squirmed more forcefully and I backed off every time he opened his mouth to me.  I thirsted for a deeper taste, but something in me was driven to tease him like he’d been teasing me – knowingly or unknowingly – over the last forty-some-odd hours.  Turnabout was fair play, after all.

“Trowa,” he objected softly.  “You’re killing me here.”

“Then do something about it,” I dared him.

He was fast.  I hadn’t realized that about him.  He was also stronger than I expected.  He sat up and, with a hand on the back of my head and another hooked behind one of my knees, he brought our hips together and mouths in contact.  I groaned as he kissed me hungrily, as if he feared he’d never see me again after today.  I kissed him back, sharing that fear.  The world was waiting for him and I was still unsure of my place at his side.  That uncertainty warred with my determination to _make_ a place for myself and I could feel the battle wearing me down from within.

Long moments later, he leaned back and brushed his thumb over my cheek, to and fro.  “It’s gonna drive me insane wondering where you are, if you’re really gonna be meeting me in London, if some moron somewhere screwed something up and you can’t get past immigration, if… if—”

I spoke only when his throat closed up on its own.  “Both Darlian and Noventa have assured me that all I have to do is visit the embassies in Lagos to get my journeyman’s visas.  I’ll go there directly from the airport.”

“But I won’t be there with you to – I dunno – be the scary boyfriend and glare all those pencil pushers into submission.”

“Boyfriend?” I echoed, feeling a wide smile stretch my lips.  He’d hinted at this once before but only once.  After everything that had happened, I’d begun to wonder if he’d chosen to forget that he’d ever mentioned we were “going steady.”

His hand moved up my thigh to my waist.  “Yeah.  If you’re OK with that.”  He grinned up at me, his eyes sparkling through his lashes.  “And, I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that you are?”

I speared my splayed fingers gently into his neatly braided hair.  “Ja,” I agreed.  “I have been.  Just gone three years.  It’s about time you noticed, my china.”  I leaned in and nibbled on his lower lip.  “My maat.”  I kissed the underside of his chin.  “My kerel.”  I rubbed against him from hip to collarbone as I traced his ear with my lips.

“Whoa, not just one but _three_ pet names.  That sounds like a lotta pressure,” he rasped, his breathless voice doing things to me that I didn’t want to ignore but knew we didn’t have time to enjoy.  “They don’t all mean ‘boyfriend,’ do they?”

“Friend, partner, boyfriend,” I replied, shivering as his hand now pressed its way up my back under my suit jacket.  “Choose one or all; I’m here for you no matter what.”

He swallowed.  I could hear it.  I wanted to kiss him again, but I waited, watching his expression soften.  My pulse raced.  My chest ached.  For a moment, it looked like he was going to show his hand, reach for me, choose me completely…

And then there came an impatient knocking on the door.

Darlian had come up to fetch us.

Gritting my teeth in frustrated defeat, I moved to climb off of Duo’s lap.

“No, he can wait thirty damn seconds,” Duo ground out, holding me in place.  “Trowa…”  He spent two of those seconds struggling for words.  “If people found out how I feel about you—”  He bit his lip.  “Damn it, it’s complicated now.”

True, but it didn’t have to be complicated for _us._  “Duo, answer two questions for me.  Yes or no.”

“OK.”

I took a steadying breath.  “Do you want me for a lover?”  Somehow I managed not to tremble in his grasp.

He answered with the same humbling honesty that had drawn me to him from the moment of our first meeting, like a thief to easy plunder.  “Yes.”

Oh God.  I had to close my eyes for a moment before I posed the second.  “Do you doubt me or my loyalty to you?”

“No.”

The relief was so exquisite it was nearly painful.  Whether this was the time for it or not, I had to offer my confession.  I wanted no secrets from him, especially now when there was so much at stake, when even the smallest wrinkle in our friendship could be sniffed out and manipulated.

“I am in love with you,” I informed him and the words seemed to shock him.  They shouldn’t have.  Some failure in communication was clearly to blame.  I was unsure whose fault that was, but now was not the time to investigate it.  I asked instead, “Are you going to give me a chance?”

He offered up a wobbly smile.  “That’s question number three.”

Indeed it was.  “I don’t need an answer now,” I replied, “I just need you to think about it.”

 _Bang—bang—bang!_   “Lord Maxwell!” Darlian called without shouting.  “We need to leave!”

Still Duo didn’t let me up.  “If you’re not in London within forty-eight hours, I’m coming to get you and God help anyone who tries to stop me.”  Something dark and furious flickered in his eyes but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.  I wondered if I’d imagined it.

“Copy that,” I replied and kissed him one last time.  I felt him giggle against my mouth.  Ja, I was using his doff military-speak now.  His laughter told me he’d gotten the joke and the tightening of his arms around me told me he’d realized the significance.

I tasted him deeply and groaned when he tasted me in return.

_“Lord Maxwell!”_

Reluctantly, I pulled away.  Duo let me go this time, but I couldn’t stop touching him just yet.  I reached for his hands and pulled him to his feet.  He walked us to the entryway and opened the door.  Duo’s lawyer frowned impatiently at us.  Darlian had to know what we’d been doing in here, especially since Duo’s eyes were dry and his lips slightly swollen.  I was hard.  Duo was hard.  There was no point in hiding it.  So, I boldly tucked a couple of wayward strands of hair back into his braid.  It was a futile gesture, but it made him smile a genuine, happy smile.

“I’ll hold the door,” he offered, reaching for the large suitcase that had been collected from the hotel he and his father had initially checked into upon arrival.  I wordlessly picked up Duo’s backpack and adjusted the expandable handle of the small roller bag I’d bought for myself downstairs.  My rucksack, clean clothes, and other belongings had already been packed neatly inside.  The contents of the case might not be those of the average first class passenger but, as Duo had said when he’d helped me pick it out, it was the appearances aspect of the thing that was most important.

Ja, I was going to have to readjust my priorities in order to accommodate that concept.  Not that appearances weren’t important to mercenaries – they were: the art of intimidation had won many a contract and detered many a confrontation – but things were simpler in that arena.  The enemies were easy to identify and the countermeasures we implemented were swift and decisive.  The same could not be said for the world of high society or international business.

Duo held the door open for me and we left the suite behind.  Darlian sent several sidelong glances in my direction as we took the lift down to the lobby.  I hadn’t had much contact with him since dinner the day before and maybe I was imagining the suspicions I sensed in him – maybe he was an ally who simply had questions – but he was a civilian and I didn’t expect him to understand someone like me.  Normally, I wouldn’t care, but Duo was going to be relying on this man exclusively over the next two days, perhaps longer if things went badly in Lagos.  Darlian would have the opportunity to ask Duo about me, to imply that he should be wary of me.

I had no doubts whatsoever that Duo wouldn’t listen.  What concerned me more was that Darlian would anger him and cause Duo to push the man away, isolating himself.  Would Khushrenada take the opening to approach Duo while he was vulnerable?  I didn’t know and I didn’t want to find out.  So, Duo needed to trust Darlian which, in turn, meant that Darlian needed to keep his mouth shut about me.  I decided that the best way to send that message would be indirectly.

Handing Duo his backpack, I said, “Check to make sure you have everything you need in there.”

He frowned at me.  I was well aware that he’d packed the thing himself the night before, but I wanted Darlian to know that I suspected his misgivings about me.  I was urging Duo to vet me in his presence, to check that I hadn’t tampered with the contents of his bag.  Duo’s gaze flickered briefly in his lawyer’s direction.  I knew the moment he understood; his chin jutted forward as he fought against a scowl.  He nodded.  “I’ll do it in the car.”  So that Darlian would be sure to see for himself that I hadn’t betrayed Duo’s trust.  He’d also see for himself that Duo was no fool.

We arrived just in time for our small jet to Bangkok.  It was fully as stomach-lurching as the arriving flight had been.  Amazingly, Duo didn’t seem the least bit affected by it.  Darlian leaned his head back against his seat and closed his eyes.  Perhaps so he could better imagine himself in Australia, riding the rolling surf on one of those boogie board things.

It wasn’t until we’d checked in for our connecting flights at Bangkok airport, had once again gone through security, and had made it to my boarding gate that I spoke to Duo’s lawyer.  I held out my hand.  “Thank you, Mr. Darlian, for all your efforts on my behalf.  I appreciate your assistance more than I can say.”

It was remarkable what the right words could do.  The man softened before my eyes and clasped my hand warmly.  “Having you join us in London will be its own reward, Mr. Barton.”

It seemed doff to thank the man a second time, so I proposed, “Can I buy you a cup of tea before your flight?”

“That sounds grand.”

“Coffee?”  I aimed the question at Duo, inviting him to join us.

He pulled a face.  “Have you _had_ airport coffee?  Eugh.  Cappuccino.  With _lots_ of sugar.”

Darlian groaned.  I grinned.  Ja, the flight from Bangkok to London (with a stopover in Copenhagen) was bound to be fun with a caffeinated and well-sugared Duo sitting within flailing distance.

We located an overpriced café with small, spaciously arranged tables within visual range of my gate.  My flight to Ethiopia wouldn’t be taking off for just over an hour, so we claimed a table.

When Darlian manfully bit back a grimace at the taste of his tea, I said, “The next one I buy for you will be better.”

He chuckled and raised his paper cup to that.

We spent the next half hour talking about anything and everything except Duo’s father and the funeral service that would be held in England.  Conversation was halting and awkward, but I wasn’t the least bit relieved when the airline staff announced pre-boarding for my flight.

“I’ll walk you over,” Duo offered.  Darlian wished me well and then pulled out his phone to check his messages… or perhaps look up that Twitter or Facebook thing that Duo had mentioned.  In any event, he gave us a moment to say our goodbyes and I appreciated it.

Unfortunately, I was also speechless.  Duo was equally silent beside me.  He clutched the strap of his well-made, leather backpack.  It wasn’t conspicuous here among other travelers who flaunted their creature comforts, but his knuckles were white.  He looked up.  Our gazes met.  He took a deep breath.  I tried not to tense in anticipation—

“Trowa!”

I startled, looking up and staring uncomprehending at the young man jogging toward us.  I’d never seen him before.  How could he possibly know _me?_   But no, he wasn’t looking at me.  His sunny smile was focused on Duo.

And Duo recognized him.  “Hey, Q!  Dude, what’re the odds?”

The young man came to a graceful halt in front of us.  The sunlight streaming in through the nearby windows reflected off of his blond hair with eye-watering brilliance.  “We missed you at the café for lunch!” he exclaimed.

“Er, yeah, about that,” Duo began awkwardly.  “Uh, wow.  Where to start?  First off, uh, _he’s_ Trowa, actually.”  Duo turned to me and gave me an apologetic smile.  “I used your name that night in Vientiane.”

A wise precaution.  I nodded.

“And this is Quentin.  Er, Q.  I went out to a club with him and some of his pals from school before you arrived in town.”

Ah, now it was all starting to make sense.

Before “Q” had to ask him for it, Duo offered his own name, “I’m Duo Maxwell.”

“Maxw—”  The young man didn’t pale so much as look suddenly stressed.  “Oh.  Oh, no.  I heard about your father.  My condolences.”

“Thanks,” Duo replied.  “And thanks for letting me tag along with you guys that night.”

“That night?  Wasn’t that the night your father—  Oh, Allah.”

“I’m really sorry if I…”  He broke off and tried again.  “I thought the same guys might be after me, but I didn’t even think I’d be putting you in any danger.  I did, though, and that wasn’t right.  Damn it, I just didn’t know what else to do until…”  He glanced my way and his look said it all.  Q was observant enough to read between the lines and he knew to keep his mouth shut about what he found there.

Q’s expression then twisted with equal measures of apology and humor.  “Ah, actually, perhaps I ought to introduce _myself._   My name isn’t Quentin.  It’s Quatre.  Quatre Raberba Winner.”

Duo stiffened.  “Winner?”

“Yes, and I doubt you could have been any safer that night than you were with me.”  Before either Duo or I could ask precisely what he meant by that, he volunteered, “Do you see the man at the magazine rack by the airport kiosk?  And the one ordering a coffee at the café?  And the one talking on his cell phone by the windows to your right?”  Winner didn’t glance around as he spoke conversationally.  “They’re all with me.  My father insists.”

“Holy crap,” Duo remarked, blinking.

I didn’t ask; Duo would fill me in on the details later.  Besides, I was more than capable of sussing out the gist of things.  I conducted a thorough survey of the area.  In addition to the three guards who had been pointed out, there were two other middle-eastern-looking men nearby who also seemed to be operating in a similar manner: they kept their bodies angled toward Winner, watching him out of the corner of their eyes.  Their lips moved as they murmured to each other via earwicks.

When I turned my attention back to Winner, he was openly assessing my body language: I’d moved closer to Duo, shifting so that I could shield him at a moment’s notice.  Caught as I was, I didn’t bother backing down and when Duo, perhaps subconsciously, inched a little closer, a little thrill of vindication shot through me.

Winner noticed it all.  I stared him down.  I was not going to apologize for anything.

Seeing this, he gave me a rueful grin.  Ja, he knew I had more in common with his bodyguards than I did with him.  Winner’s discerning look told me he had considerable experience dealing with people like me.  And that in turn told me that, whoever Winner was, he was a fairly important person; his father had felt it necessary to send at least five bodyguards to look after his son during the holidays.

If only Lord Maxwell had been so overbearing and paranoid.

Beside me, Duo sighed out a breath as he returned his attention to our gathering.  Perhaps he was thinking the same thing I was, regretting the same lack of precaution.  The moment stretched out, awkward and unbreaking.

Just as Winner drew in a breath, clearly intending to speak, the airline employees held up the sign announcing general boarding.  The passengers rushed the gate like starving dogs at feeding time.  I made no move to join them just yet.

“Look, Q,” Duo said, smiling winningly at his friend, “if there’s time before your flight, let’s get caught up, but could you gimme a few minutes to see Trowa off?”

“Of course,” Winner agreed readily.  “I’ll meet you at the café there.”  He nodded to me and held out a hand for me to shake which I readily grasped.  I had no real reason to be hostile; Duo had made his preference clear when he’d moved closer to me.  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Trowa.”

“Likewise, Quatre.”

Duo let out another long breath as Winner strolled across the way and up to the cashier to place his order.  “Damn.  He knows.”

It was very likely.  Those shrewd, clear eyes had undoubtedly caught the familiarity between Duo and myself on top of my protective stance and Duo’s subconscious trust.  Winner had figured out that I was likely more than just Duo’s china and _much_ more than just his bodyguard.  As Duo’s observation was a valid one, I didn’t try to downplay it.  “Who is he?” I asked instead.

“Long story short,” Duo told me, “his father, who is a sheikh, owns a company based in Qatar that specializes in information technology and security systems.  They regularly partner up with Maxwell Limited on projects.”  He paused, cleared his throat, and said, “Sorry I gave him your name.”

“It’s fine.”  It really was.  “It was a good idea.”

He chuckled.  “And here you thought I was just a handsome face with a charming grin.”

“I did think that,” I admitted, “up until I realized that you knew your nocturnes.”

He grinned.

I smiled.  I ached to kiss him, but I knew I couldn’t.  Wouldn’t.  Not here.  I pulled him into my arms and hugged him tightly, trying to keep it brotherly even though we both knew it wasn’t.  “I’ll be in London before you know it,” I murmured in his ear.  “And I meant what I said: I’m with you no matter what.”

His arms tightened around me.  “I’m holding you to that.”

Literally, it seemed.  I breathed out a laugh.

The crowd of passengers was thinning but final boarding hadn’t been announced yet and I wasn’t moving a second before it was.

“Send me updates,” he ordered so softly it was almost a request.

“I will.”  I promised, understanding in that moment how powerless he was feeling.  Just as there’d been nothing I could do for him until I’d reached Vientiane, there was nothing he could do for me until I reached the arrivals hall of Heathrow.  “And you—”

“Will do the same,” he readily agreed.

“I’ll call you when I can.”  And I would.  Even if I had to kick everyone out of their bunks or lock myself in the kitchen cupboard.

Movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention.  The final boarding announcement flashed onto the screen above the flight counter.  I released him reluctantly.  “I’ll see you in London.”

“Forty-eight hours, Major Trowa,” he reminded me, his eyes suspiciously bright.

I checked my watch just to shake a smile loose from him.  “Got it.”  And because there was no one in the vicinity, I murmured, “I owe you a kiss.”

“You bet you do.”

Handing over my boarding pass and going through the gate was hard, almost as hard as letting him go after that night in Egypt three years ago.  I took comfort in the knowledge that, if all went well, I’d be seeing him again soon and Darlian would be with him until then.

I paused just before I entered the retractable passenger ramp and glanced back.  Duo was still standing there, watching me.  I wondered suddenly if he’d watched me walk away three years ago.  This time, I gave him an encouraging smile and a nod.  I’d be with him as soon as humanly possible.

It wasn’t easy leaving him in that hands of his lawyer, but I had no other choice.  I had to go back to Lagos because that was where the documents I needed in order to enter the UK and the States were waiting for me.  I was lucky they’d been able to change the issuance dates; changing the location of issuance would have pushed things back weeks.  I could not wait weeks.

The flight back was not the unendurable nightmare it had been before, but it was still nerve-wracking.  I now blended in with the other first class passengers thanks to my suit, but I despised the scented towels and the wine menu just as much.  What did I care about those bloody things when something could go wrong in Lagos, trapping me in Africa and Duo in England without backup?

I arrived in Addis Ababa before Duo landed in Copenhagen.  I spent most of my ninety-minute layover composing a message to him as slowly as possible.  Every time I wrote out the words “Watch your back” I deleted them.  This time, when the airline staff announced pre-boarding, I didn’t hang back.  I knew it was doff but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the sooner I got on the bloody plane, the sooner I’d be arriving in Lagos.

Maybe it worked; we landed in Nigeria fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.  Without a bag to collect from the carousels, I headed directly through customs.  The captain’s greeting boomed out across the arrivals hall of Lagos’ international airport, startling me from my single-minded contemplation of the nearest exit where I was planning to wait for my ride, “Aweh, Trowa!”

I stopped in my tracks.

He strode forward, grinning widely through his beard.  “Well, look at you!”

I was surprised to see him here in the building.  He hadn’t said anything about meeting me in the lobby when I’d informed him of my return flight.  “You’re not paying for airport parking,” I accused bluntly.

“Nooit!” he reassured me, as frugal as ever.  “Martins is circling the complex in the bakkie.”

Something about the captain’s tone made me ask, “By himself?”

He chuckled.  “Bryce is navigating.”

Oh, bloody ever-bugger-fucking hell.  I glanced down at my suit.  “I should get changed before they pull around.”  If I didn’t, I’d never hear the end of it, not until I boarded the plane for London tomorrow morning anyway.  _If,_ in fact, I had the documentation I’d need in order to enter the country.

Traveling from east to west, I hadn’t lost much time.  Our flight from Vientiane had been befokken early, so it was only just gone lunch here.  I was wearing the suit because I needed to put in an appearance at not one but two embassies by the end of the business day today.  But if those two moegoes were going to see me like this, I’d have to scheme a new strategy.

The captain patted me soundly on the shoulder.  “Too late for that, Trowa.”

“What?”

“They saw you on the telly.  The local news aired clips from the press conference.”  He grinned, looking me up and down.  “Same suit, is it?”

I bit back a groan.

It was his habit to always lead the way, but he kept pace with me and my roller bag through the airport exit as I moved at funeral procession pace.  He said suddenly, “We’re all proud of you.”

“No,” I replied, “don’t be.”  Without Duo nearby to distract me from it, failure curdled in my belly.

Striding toward the edge of the pavement, ready to raise a beefy arm to flag down the 4x4 when it next passed by, he replied, “You got to your man, didn’t you?”

“But I lost his father.”  I almost couldn’t say the words aloud.

Still, he didn’t look at me.  He squinted into the distance and demanded with almost brutal directness, “Are you to blame?”

“In part.”

The captain reached out to squeeze my shoulder.  “Where did you go wrong?”

I couldn’t answer; there _was_ no simple answer to that.  Duo had already been over it, had dissected the whole sorry thing, had drilled holes in my fortress of regret.  Was I to blame or wasn’t I?  Even that much was uncertain.  Ever since Darlian’s arrival, I’d been so focused on Duo that I hadn’t brooded on my own culpability.  True, Duo seemed to have forgiven me, but that hadn’t absolved me.  I swallowed thickly.  “I…”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I looked up sharply.

“I’ve known you nearly all your life, Trowa,” the captain reminded me earnestly.  I had his full attention now.  “You’re like a son to me and you’ve never been at a loss for words when there was something that needed to be said.  If you can’t tell me _what_ you did wrong, then you did _nothing_ wrong.”

I stiffened.  “There was something I didn’t do _right.”_   There must have been.

“That’s life.  We only get one shot at it, from moment to moment.  We do the best we can and live with the rest.”  His hand was still on my shoulder.  He gripped me more firmly, giving me a gentle but insistent shake.  “You’re your own man, Trowa.”

It wasn’t meant as a comfort.  Perhaps it was meant as an apology.  It felt more like a warning.

Just then, a dusty bakkie pulled up and Bryce leaned out the window with a lewd wolf-whistle.  “Well, now, who’s this smart-looking guy?  We don’t know anyone like him, do we, Martins?”

“Not that I’m aware of.  But he does look a little familiar.”

“That’s because we saw him on TV!”

“Oh, yeah…  He’s not as tall in real life.”

“Shut it,” I told them both, reaching for the door handle and tossing my suitcase into the cab.  Surprisingly, they let it go.  I could only guess that the captain was silently interceding on my behalf, gesturing and glaring them into silence.

I couldn’t blame either Martins or Bryce for ribbing me.  As far as they knew, my mission had been a success, was _still_ a success: Duo had emailed me from Copenhagen to tell me he was fine; he was safe.  What they didn’t know was that I’d only managed half of my objectives.  They had no idea that I’d had to pull Duo away from his trapped and dying father on the roof of the temple where his body had been found.  They didn’t know that I’d had to force Duo to choose me.  They didn’t know how close I’d come to getting both Duo and his father out of there alive, so they couldn’t know how badly it tormented me that I hadn’t.

I had no intention of explaining it to them.

“Where to first?” Martins asked.

“The US embassy,” I said.  I had an appointment there on the hour.  I dug the unused roll of US dollars out of my pocket and tossed it over the barrier of the seats onto the dash in front of him.  “Thanks for the lend.”

“Anytime, kiddo,” he replied and, palming the cash, he pulled out into traffic.

I didn’t know what kind of resistance I was expecting at the US embassy but whatever I was bracing myself for didn’t happen.  I was there a grand total of fifteen minutes before the clerk returned with my passport and showed me the new visa seal that had been placed on the next available page.  I paid the administrative fee and went downstairs to the car park.

“That was fast,” Bryce mused.  “Maybe I should get me one of them suit things.”

“They’re dead useful in fluorescent lighting,” I told him flatly.  “British embassy next, Martins.”

He passed me a flask.  “Have some coffee, kid.  You look like your ass is draggin’.”

I waited until we’d stopped at a robot to pour myself half a capful and down it in one gulp.  I wasn’t in any rush because I was expecting the light to suddenly change and Martins to step on the gas.  Making sure I didn’t stain my only suit was a concern, but it wasn’t the main one: Martins’ coffee was always just a tweak shy of siff and if you didn’t gulp it, it’d be coming back up the same way it’d gone down.  Guaranteed.

The brew woke me up with the gift of a grimace and got me into the lobby of the British embassy under my own power.  I doubted that anything more palatable would have been able to do the same.

At the British embassy, I encountered a similar lack of obstacles.  It only made me all the more tense.  I wandered around the lobby as they did whatever they needed to do with my passport, reading notices meant for British citizens.  It bothered me that, even though I was looking at English, there were too many words that I didn’t know the meaning of.  Telling myself that they were what Duo called “legalese” did not give me any measure of comfort.  Despite my vow three years ago to study hard, to remake myself, to become Duo’s equal, I was pathetically far behind him.

“Mr. Barton?”

I turned back to the service desk and the woman who had initially taken my passport for verification.  “Yes?”

“Your documents are all in order.  Best of luck in your new position.”

“Thank you,” I replied numbly.  I paid the fee with my dwindling savings and left.

“Now where to?” Bryce asked as I slumped into the rear seat of the bakkie, exhausted.  The strings of tension that had looped and knotted around me dissolved, or perhaps they snapped.  I was done in.  Their disappearance didn’t mean that I didn’t have to be vigilant any longer; I was sure there were a number of people who would actively try to keep me away from Duo if given the chance, but I couldn’t continue fighting their phantoms until I’d gotten a solid ten hours of sleep.

“Back to base,” I requested.  “But don’t expect me to do any cooking.”  I didn’t give rocks that it was tradition for a troupe member on his way out to cook for everyone on his last night as a Barton Merc.

Martins laughed.  “We’ll let you off the hook just this once.”

“Happily, too,” Bryce added with an exaggerated shudder.  He was probably remembering the last time I’d made bredie.  It hadn’t been the first time I’d scorched the soup, undercooked the beans, and turned the meat into shoe leather, but it looked like it was going to be the last.

I grunted out a couple of syllables in lieu of a response and dug my mobile phone out of my pocket.  My vision repeatedly blurred as I fumbled through the email I was attempting to send.  //It’s done,// I texted to Duo.  And, as there was now no reason for why I wouldn’t be making my flight in the morning, I added: //I’ll be seeing you tomorrow evening.//

I still intended to call him but, as it turned out, he called me first.

“You really got everything?” he blurted after the call connected.

“Ja,” I answered, ignoring the catcalls the other guys were giving me as I hauled my arse off of the bench in the mess hall and headed outside.  The captain had cooked tonight so supper was decent, but I’d left my plate behind without a moment’s hesitation as soon as my phone had started buzzing.

“What the hell is all that noise?”

I waited until the door shut behind me so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice over the ruckus.  “Overwhelming approval for the suit you bought me.”

He laughed.  “No shit?  You’re still wearing it?”

“I’m planning on bloody sleeping in it.”

He chuckled.  “Your flight’s not _that_ early.”

True, but—  “That’s not the reason.”

There was a moment of silence as Duo worked through that.  Eventually he sighed.  “I give up.  I’m too damn jetlagged to figure it out.  Explain, please.”

My own exhaustion retreated for a moment and I grinned.  He was too honest for his own good sometimes.  “Well, since _you’re_ not here to take up space in my bunk, I’ll have to make do with the things you bought me.”

“That… is kinda sappy.”

“I’m a cupboard romantic.”

“Closet,” he corrected, laughing softly.  “But seriously, Tro.  Put on your PJs.  You can cuddle up with your cell phone.”

I had every intention of doing so.  “Doesn’t everyone curl up with their mobile at night?”

“Hah!  So true.  Why do you think I answered your first text message so damn fast?”

Oh God.  I was instantly aching to get my hands on him, and yet I wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to let me that close once I got to London.  Public displays of affection certainly wouldn’t be smart and I owed it to him to be smart about this.  “I’m too bloody exhausted to pretend that doesn’t turn me on.”

“You’ve seen me in my PJs.  They’re not all that exciting, Tro.”

“That is a matter of opinion.”

He chuckled darkly and pitched his voice low.  “Your opinion is very important to us.”

I gritted my teeth.  Why did I let him tease me like this?  “Us?” I pressed, digging for the punch line of the joke.

“Your china, your maat, your kerel.  I’m told three is a lucky number, so I’m keepin’ all of ‘em.”

“Jesus.”  I needed a moment.  “You’re telling me this over the phone?”

“I’ve gotta work on my timing, I know.  But hell, nobody’s perfect.”

His body was as close to perfect as a body _could_ get.  Oh God.  I could not be thinking about him like this now.  Once we hung up, I was going to have to walk back into the mess hall and face all the guys.  I’d taken off the suit jacket so I had no camouflage for my arousal.  None whatsoever.

“If I can’t sleep tonight, it’ll be your fault,” I accused, trying to brace myself against the tingling in my blood which was pooling low in my belly.  Thoughts of Duo-as-my-kerel weren’t exactly restful.

“Is this the part where I offer to help you with that?”

God, _yes._   “No.  This is the part where you tell me where you are and whether or not you’re safe and secure for the night.  Then you tell me what your schedule is for tomorrow so that I’ll know where to meet you.  After _that,_ we hang up and both of us try to get some sleep.”

“Tro, you know I love you, but you’ve really gotta work on your pillow talk, baby.”

I bit back a bark of laughter and let a sudden, evil inclination pitch _my_ voice low.  Turnabout was fair play, after all.  “Maybe you can help me with that, _bokkie.”_   The instant the endearment left my mouth, I was tensing in anticipation of the guys’ reactions.  It was a reflex.  They weren’t here and they couldn’t hear me; I was safe, but it took a moment for that to sink in.

Duo produced a sound that was part sigh, part groan, and part growl.  “Oh, fuck.  That voice,” he accused, damning me with his tone.  “You are so evil.  So, so evil.  Fine.  You win.  I’m in London at the Dorset Square Hotel.  Thomas is across the hall and I’m staying put for the night.  Tomorrow I’ll be at the chapel all day.  Relena Darlian, Thomas’ daughter, will be picking you up at the airport and giving you a ride.”

Anticipation made my hands tremble.  In less than twenty-four hours, I’d be seeing him again.  “I’ll wear the suit.”

“The white shirt and black tie,” he added and, if he hadn’t mentioned that much, I might not have realized that I was meeting him at an actual memorial service until I’d walked inside the church.  Duo took evasion to a whole new level.  He continued brusquely, “Now my work here is done… but you’re welcome to stay on the line as I sit here all by myself and think of you.”

I didn’t for one moment believe that he was going to skommel on the eve of the public ceremony meant to honor his father’s life and memory.  “Duo,” I said firmly, a little alarmed now, “just take a moment.  Breathe and relax.”

He did.  “I’m sorry.  That was a shitty thing to say.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

I had a suspicion and I suspected he was coping with his father’s death the only way he could: by avoiding it rigorously.  Now that I thought of it, I realized that he hadn’t once used the words “dead” and “my dad” in the same sentence.  And although I couldn’t recall it with crystal clarity, I was sure he’d been equally round-about in acknowledging his brother’s death; and he might never have mentioned that his mother had died if I hadn’t asked him a direct question about her.  I bit back a curse.  Maybe all this suggestive talk was just another distraction for him.  Maybe he still didn’t know what he wanted from me aside from a means of avoiding reality for as long as possible.

Damn him.

I sighed.  “It’s fine.”  It wasn’t but—  “I’ll be there soon and we’ll sort it out.”  One way or another.

“Yeah,” he said, more to take up space in the conversation than in agreement.  “Look, I really appreciate everything you’re doing for me.  Even when you call me on my bullshit.  No.  Check that.  _Especially_ when you call me on my bullshit.”

I let out a breath of relief.  “I told you,” I reminded him softly.  “Whatever you need.”

“What about you?”

“What?”

“This ain’t a one-way street.  What do you need, Tro?”

I didn’t even have to ponder it.  “Honesty,” I told him, “and—”  I broke off before I could confess to my greatest fear.  He didn’t need to deal with that.

“And?” he insisted and I had to admit that I’d been expecting him to push, had even been counting on it.

I bit my lip.  My fingers curled tighter around the phone.  “And don’t ask me to leave you.”

“I could never do that.”

I released the breath I’d been holding but my fingers didn’t loosen.  “Good.”

“Sometimes I am,” he admitted and I could hear his smile.

I rolled my eyes.  “Hang up the phone, Duo,” I told him softly.

He sighed.  “Yeah, OK, Tro.”

I waited until the connection cut before lowering the phone from my ear.  I could feel myself smiling.  In my chest, my heart was beating, strong and steady but not too fast.  My arousal had faded, but I hesitated to head back inside.  I needed a moment to think.

Maybe we weren’t as far along as Duo had implied, maybe he wasn’t as ready for me to be his lover as I was to be his, but we were still friends.  And if I could keep him honest about it, then one day we might be more.

It wasn’t much, but that thought got me through the night.

“You’re always welcome in the troupe,” the captain told me as he put the bakkie in park beside the departures hall.  I was early for my flight, but I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep when my eyes had snapped open at dawn, my heart racing with irrational panic.  I’d fumbled with my wristwatch and checked the time; no, I hadn’t missed my flight.  It had only been a bad dream.

But when I’d slouched into the mess hall and set my bag beside the door, the captain had offered me a cup of coffee and an early ride.  “To miss the morning traffic” was the excuse he’d used.  I hadn’t cared.  I’d agreed immediately.

“If you’re ever in need…” he continued, speaking to the dashboard.

I nodded.  “Thanks, Captain.”

His beard twitched with a grin, a knee-jerk reaction of humor.  The moment of silence swelled between us on the bench seat.  I hesitated to reach for the door handle.  “I’ll call when I arrive.”

“Do that,” he agreed.

Words failed me.

Smiling, the captain reached across the seat and opened the door for me.  “The future waits for no man, Trowa.”

I got out, dragging my overpriced suitcase with me.  I felt naked without my knives and pistol, helpless.  In many ways, I suppose I was.  Was this what the moment of one’s own birth was supposed to feel like?

I looked at him through the 4x4’s open door, knowing I couldn’t go back.  I could only go forward.  The captain waited for me to shut the door.  When I finally did, he drove off.  I didn’t watch him leave.

I turned toward the airport entrance and wheeled my suitcase up to the check-in counter.  I was the first person in line and the first passenger at the gate.  With as befokken early as I was, it practically begged for flight delays, but the plane lifted off on time.

As the plane climbed higher and higher, I closed my eyes and put thoughts of the troupe out of my mind.  That part of my life was done with.  I was going to be with Duo now.

The thought of him had me smiling over the memory of Duo’s good-morning check-in message.  Apparently, scones did not dunk well in English breakfast tea.  It spoke volumes of his discomfort; Duo only acted like he was half his age when he was feeling particularly off-balance.

He’d also written: //Thanks for teaching me all those smooth moves back in Egypt because I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to kill someone to get a decent cup of coffee in this damn place.//  Ja, he was off-balance and hating every moment of it.

I’d texted back, //I never taught you how to kill someone.  I could, though.  If you asked nicely.//

I shifted in my seat as I watched Lagos slowly shrink and spin beneath the jet.  Teasing Duo was a tease for me as well.  I couldn’t _not_ imagine how he might ask nicely.  Still…  Duo might talk like all he thought about was getting me alone for a quick press, but our conversation last night had blown some of the smoke out of the room and cracked the mirrors.  In fact, now that I thought of it, he didn’t sound so much like he was trying to get into my pants, but that he was hoping I’d get into his.

I scowled as the hints assembled themselves for my inspection and the only conclusion I could draw was not a pleasant one.  Duo’s blatant teasing and his hesitance to make the first move in our encounters made me think he was hoping I’d take the decision out of his hands.  I doubted he realized what he was doing, which was why I could not, under any circumstances, give in.  It would probably kill me to do it, but I had to wait for him to man up to what he wanted.  He had to be sure or I could lose more than a warm welcome in his bed.  I could lose his trust.

By the time the plane began descending toward Heathrow, I’d managed to focus my mind on my objectives.  I would be Duo’s friend.  I would watch his back.  I would keep him safe.  I would trust him to work with me on those three points, but I would not expect anything else from him.  I would not urge him to give me something he wasn’t ready for or something he would later come to regret.  I would not take his choices away from him.  I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to manage all of that, but I’d suss it out.  There had to be a way.  There _must_ be.

It was a strange thrill to see my name written out on one of those welcome cards in the arrivals hall and it was anticlimactic to find someone other than Duo holding it up.  I’d just spent the last six and a half hours schooling myself for this confrontation and he wasn’t even here for it.  But of course he wasn’t.  He’d told me to expect Darlian’s daughter.

“Relena Darlian?” I asked, stepping over to where the card-bearer, a young woman with long, light brown hair, was standing.

“Yes.  Mr. Barton?” she confirmed and I nodded, shaking the hand she offered.  “It’s so nice to meet a friend of Dominic’s.  He speaks very highly of you.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  If _Duo_ had spoken highly of me, I would have been thrilled.  But I didn’t know why he might be speaking of me at all in a context where he was known as _Dominic_ rather than _Duo._

When I didn’t respond immediately, she added, “He also seemed concerned that you’d have difficulties with the immigration authorities.  You didn’t, did you?”

I shook my head.  No, after all the worrying and fretting I’d done over it, I’d more or less daydreamed my way through the checkpoint.  Duo’s latest message had demanded my total attention.  Only now did I wonder if he’d intended it that way.  Had that been his way of “helping” me through the stress of immigration?

I suspected it was.

When Relena Darlian cleared her throat, I realized I was still standing in the middle of the arrivals hall.  “Can I help you with your luggage?” she asked solicitously.

“No, thank you.”

“The car’s this way.”

Her stride was brisk and keeping pace with her helped keep my mind alert.  As we walked, I phoned the captain, reporting in for the last time.  The call was short; we’d already said our goodbyes.

“Would you prefer to stop at the hotel before going to the chapel?”

I glanced at Relena Darlian out of the corner of my eye.  I didn’t think I was imagining the curiosity in her expression.  She carried herself like a professional but she couldn’t have been more than four years older than me.  Of course she was curious.  Lord Dominic Maxwell had made _me_ a priority and I was an unknown.

I considered my choices, keeping that vague concept of appearances in mind.  I would have to get used to this kind of scheming, so I might as well start now.  I weighed my options.  If I chose the hotel, I wasn’t sure what kind of impression I’d give her, perhaps one which spoke of a causal relationship between myself and Duo.  But I was certain that if I chose the chapel, I’d seem focused on Duo and his wellbeing, which would suggest that _he_ was _my_ priority.  It would reveal too much.

To hell with appearances.

“The chapel is fine.”

Her mouth twitched into a tiny grin.  “That’s what Dominic said you’d say.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, but he was adamant that you be given the choice.”

I felt like I’d passed a test, and it felt like Duo had turned a corner.  Hadn’t I just spent the flight contemplating how necessary it was that he make the decision for himself on whether or not to be with me?  And here he was mirroring my own resolution albeit on a smaller scale.

The weather was miserable and the drive torturous.  If I’d had a license, I would have ordered Relena Darlian to pull over and let me behind the wheel.  It was all I could do not to las her to stop operating the pedals in those bloody high heels of hers.  In the end, I had to run through the process of dismantling and cleaning a rifle point by point in my mind as I stared out the window.  It helped distract me from the sudden stops and hooting horns.

The woman clearly needed a driver.  She was putting the rest of motorized London in mortal peril.

I didn’t expect anything so grand and dramatic as Duo waiting for my arrival in the rain at the front door of the chapel and he wasn’t, but I was distracted from my vague disappointment by the chapel itself.  This was not a chapel.  This was a cathedral.

If Thomas Darlian hadn’t ordered the suit I was currently wearing and Duo hadn’t approved it, I would have had to dare myself to go inside.  It didn’t help matters that I was feeling acutely nauseous thanks to Relena’s driving, but I banished my discomfort.  Duo was waiting for me.

I tucked my suitcase into an antechamber that Relena indicated with her dripping umbrella and then I held open the door to the nave and waited for her to precede me.

No, you wouldn’t think that manners were a thing mercenaries would bother with, but the captain had taken care to demonstrate them flawlessly with clients.  We’d won just as many contracts due to his attentive gestures as through our intimidating posturing.  I went with the former method as, under the circumstances, intimidation would only get me noticed unfavorably.

The nave was extraordinarily grand beyond anything I’d ever seen in my travels throughout Africa.  Of course, I sought out Duo first and foremost but, seeing him in a hushed discussion with someone who had come to pay their respects, I permitted myself a moment to absorb the grandeur so that I would not be distracted by it a second time.  By the time the dark-suited, somber mourner had moved away, Relena Darlian was gesturing me forward.

I couldn’t reach for Duo’s hand here and grasp it the way I wanted to, not with dozens of people looking on, and I didn’t trust myself to stop at a simple handshake, but I dared to stand close enough that the sleeves of our suits brushed.

“You’re really here,” he observed and I watched his shoulders relax.

“Ja,” I answered and then I couldn’t ignore the simple wooden casket on the raised dais any longer.  I thought about apologizing, but the words seemed so pointless now.  And what did I really expect him to say in reply that hadn’t already been said?

“Are you hungry?  Tired?  I told Relena to take you to the hotel if you wanted—”

“I know.  I’m fine.”  I’d wanted to be here.  Nowhere else.

When the massive, wooden door to the nave opened again, I moved unobtrusively to a pew, seating myself near the stone wall and its high, narrow stained glass windows.  As I listened to Duo’s gracious acceptance of condolences, I let myself remember Lord Maxwell.  I recalled my first glimpse of him: stately, distinguished, a man of means and purpose.  Duo had seemed like a lost and mangy puppy beside him, but looking at him now I could see the same inner strength and determination.  Perhaps, in those final moments atop the collapsing temple, Lord Victor Townsend Maxwell had passed that self-possession on to his son.

I looked away when it became difficult to breathe through my suddenly congested nose.  I would not cry here.  If anyone had a right to tears, it was Duo.  Not me.

To distract myself as Duo shook hands with more visitors and the pews filled with mourners, I removed my mobile phone from my pocket and began writing a text message that I had no intention of sending.  All the words came out stilted and jagged, like a novice’s knife work, but I let them flow, drip, and splatter as they would.  I told Duo how strong he was, how much I admired him, how confusing and inspiring he was in turns, how much I believed in him, trusted him, could see my own future thanks to his presence in it.  Duo would call it sappy, I was sure.

It was the longest thing I’d ever written in my life.  It was rambling and without paragraph breaks.  It would probably make my eyes bleed to re-read it.  When the priest approached Duo to tell him in hushed tones that everything was ready, I hastily saved the text in the unsent messages folder and shut off my phone.  Duo sat near the aisle, but catching his single, pleading glance in my direction, I rose and moved toward him, taking the seat beside his as if I had every right to be there.

If curiosity could be music, there would have been a single, quizzical note blaring in perfect five-part harmony in the church.  Only a handful of these well-dressed people had seen me before.  I was sure to be a favorite topic of gossip later.  I had no desire to be present for it.

The memorial service was short.  The priest spoke as did several of Lord Maxwell’s longtime friends and business associates.  Duo made no move to address the assembly himself and no one seemed to expect him to.  There were very few tears shed and I wondered if this class of people were simply better schooled at hiding their emotions or if none of them had truly felt a kinship with Duo’s father.

Duo looked…  Actually, I didn’t have a word for it.  His eyes were dry.  I would have described him as looking numb except for the determined angle of his chin and the straight line of his shoulders.  I didn’t reach for his hand, but I watched for any indication that he might reach for mine.  His self-containment was dread-inducing.  When the storm within him broke – and I was sure it would – the deluge would undoubtedly drown us both.

When the priest returned to the podium and closed the service, I was relieved.  I hadn’t known the man that these strangers had spoken of and I resented their efforts to alter my views.  Never mind that they had all had nothing but good things to say; my idea of Lord Maxwell was my own and I was not interested in carrying around someone else’s baggage in my memory.  I decided that this would be the first, last, and only public memorial service I would attend.  I wondered if Duo’s stiff shoulders and clenched jaw meant he felt the same.

Duo stood and said farewell as everyone filed past on their way outside, back into the icy rain.  It was nearly dinner time and I was sure that everyone was letting their hunger pangs lead them to more pleasant venues.  Only the Darlians and the cathedral staff remained behind with us.  I listened as the priest promised to have the casket delivered to the cemetery the following morning.  Duo nodded, offered quietly spoken and somber thanks, and then bid a good night to the Darlians and the priest.

He reached a hand out to me and I stood.  Duo didn’t bother with pretense here among these people.  He clasped my hand hard enough to make me wince and I would have done just that if I hadn’t been half-hoping for precisely this demonstration.  I squeezed back.

Maybe the Darlians and the priest watched us leave.  I didn’t look behind me to check.  I only had eyes for Duo.  He collected my suitcase without a word and we dashed out into the rain.  I was glad for his hand in mine when the car park revealed half a dozen nearly identical, black cars.  Duo aimed us at one in particular and we splashed over.

He pressed the remote and gestured for me to jump into the passenger’s seat.  I did and half a second later my suitcase got tossed into the back.  I reached over to open the driver’s side door for him and he slid into the car.  His momentum brought him over to my side and suddenly he was kissing me deeply and thoroughly.  It was dark out and water was sheeting over the windows.  The area was empty of people.  I didn’t hesitate to respond in kind.  My wet hand ended up cradling his head around the damp base of his once-again banded hair.

I could have kissed him forever, inhaling the scent off his skin as his tongue brushed and rolled against mine in the darkness of our open mouths.  Forever.  Yes, if not for the insistent twitch of hardening flesh inside my trousers, I could have quite happily existed in the moment eternally.

He leaned back first.  “Damn it.  I don’t think I can drive right now.”

I grinned.  “As well.”

“At least you have the excuse of not having a driver’s license.”

I didn’t argue with him.  I’d taken my shifts driving all over the bloody continent of Africa whenever we’d trekked on in search of new work, but I’d never bothered with a driver’s license.  I hadn’t had a permanent residence to put on it.

He sighed out a chuckle and reached up for no other reason than to brush a fingertip over my lower lip.  “I’m glad you’re here.”

I lifted a brow in skepticism.  “You’re _glad?”_   After all the hullabaloo and the flights I’d been on, I was fairly sure I deserved a bit more than that.  He could certainly do better.

“Relieved,” he elaborated.  “Ecstatic.  Thrilled to the point of nearly coming in my shorts.”

“Duo,” I gently chided him.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.  “Sorry.  I know I need to cut that out.”

“No, just give me your honesty,” I reminded him.  “Under no circumstances should you cut anything out or _off.”_

He laughed.  It was a hard sound, as if he were expunging pieces of his broken heart.

I said nothing even when he’d wound down and was slumped over the steering wheel, his forehead pressed to the leather and heavy, panting sobs dampening the airbag emblem.  I reached for his bangs, smoothing them away so I could see his face.

He rolled his head toward my hand and I kept stroking his temple and hair.  This struck me as a mothering gesture; I’d seen it occasionally when I’d gone into small towns and villages to buy and barter for supplies.  Sometimes mothers touched their young children thusly.  Duo was not a child… or was he?  Perhaps both of us were, or wished we were.  Ja, that sounded right: if only he and I could retreat into that time of innocence and freedom.  I’d never known that state of grace, but Duo might be able to lead me there.  Maybe if I paid attention, he’d show me what it was like.

“Guns are like people?” he whispered and I needed a moment for the words to sink in.

“Ja,” I answered, remembering when I’d given him that advice.  “Handle with care.”

I watched as his mouth curved into a grin.  He opened his eyes and sighed.  There wasn’t a single tear in sight.  He straightened and I let my hand drop to the armrest between our seats.  He recurled his fingers around the steering wheel.  “You’re better at that than I am,” he told me.

“You’re better than you give yourself credit for.”  What he needed was to show himself the same care he showed others, but I couldn’t bring myself to rip and tear at his walls when he was trying so hard to keep himself together.  He’d come to grieve for his father in his own time.  Just because I thought he’d be better off facing it sooner rather than later didn’t give me the right to alter the course he’d set.  And just because I thought he should let himself grieve didn’t mean I wanted to be the one to put him through that misery.

Duo turned toward me, his hands still gripping the wheel and, for a moment, it looked as if he might say something: a few words to go with the look of deep appreciation and motivation in his eyes.  In the end, he just shook his head and reached for the ignition.  “Whadaya say we give this driving thing a try?”

“I’m all for it,” I replied, “especially if there’s takeaway involved.”

“Takeaway,” he muttered.  “Geez, it’s like you’re in your natural habitat here.”

I buckled my seatbelt as he reversed out of the parking space and aimed the car at the street.  Duo was a much better driver than Relena Darlian.  I shared this observation with him and he chuckled.

“I’ve never had the pleasure,” he admitted.

It pleased me that he hadn’t.  “Skort,” I advised and then elaborated when I glimpsed his frown of confusion, “You’ve been warned.”

“Duly noted.”

We stopped at a fish-and-chips shop and ate our dinners in the car.

“Where are we going?” I finally thought to ask when I realized we were turning onto a highway bound for Colchester, wherever that was.

“To the house.”

“The house?”

“Um, yeah.”  I stared at him until he added a bit more to that.  “All the Maxwells are buried there.”

Before I could fill the silence by asking him to describe the house to me, he nodded toward the glove compartment.  “Plug in the music player, will ya?  Play us something for a rainy, British evening.”

This being my first rainy, British evening, I wasn’t sure what kind of music that description was supposed to indicate.  I scrolled through the playlist and was pleasantly surprised by the range of classical music that was stored on it.  I selected Bach’s _Toccata and Fugue._

Duo grinned as the signature opening blasted out from the car’s speakers.  “Yeah,” he approved.

“Is this your music player?” I asked, as I browsed through the offerings.  I had yet to find anything that looked like indie rock and I knew that was his most recent musical preference.

“Uh, actually, it’s yours.”

“What?”

“Um, happy welcome to England?”

“Duo…” I objected.

“I picked it up at the airport.  Duty free.  And putting music on it kept me from going batshit crazy when jetlag hit this morning at three freakin’ thirty a.m.”

I could have argued with him, but there didn’t seem to be a point.  “Thank you,” I told him.

“Sure thing.”  He said it lightly, as if he hadn’t bought it and packed it full of music that he’d known I’d like and given it to me so he could get thanks for it.  I marveled.  I came from a world where favors and debts were counted.  Even amongst comrades and in jest, they were still counted and remembered and called upon.  Oftentimes, they were the glue that kept friendships intact.  Duo never bothered with keeping track of things like debts or favors.  For a moment, my hold on him seemed frighteningly tenuous.

“What do you usually eat for breakfast in the mornings?” he asked suddenly and I let go of my worries.  I was being a chop.  I didn’t need favors and debts to hold onto Duo, to make sure he was holding onto me.

“Coffee.”

He laughed again.  “As helpful as that is to know, I was talking about food.”

“And?” I returned drolly.

“Coffee is not a food item.”

“Depends on how thick it is.”

“OK, rule number one: I do the cooking.”

“Fine.”  I thrilled at the very existence of the rule itself.  What it implied was that Duo and I would be around each other often and in close enough proximity for cooking to be an issue.  It implied cohabitation.  It implied everything I wanted.  Miraculous.

Obliviously, he continued, “Brace yourself for the amazing culinary delights of Chef Boyardee.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“I might even let you assist if you can manage a can opener without incident.”

“What an adventure.  A real jol.”

He tilted his head to the side and grinned cockily out at the soggy night.  “Hey, I know how to show a guy a good time.”

“Do you?”

He ducked his head.  “Well, I haven’t gotten any complaints so far.”

I doggedly dug deeper, “And how many opportunities for complaints have there been?”

“Uh… well, there’s you…”

I waited.

He continued not adding to the list.

I leaned back in my seat and smiled.  He glanced my way, his lips twitching under the strain of trying to keep a straight face.

“How far out is the house?” I asked so I could hear him talk.

“Not far by American standards.  Or African standards, I bet.  But you might as well settle in.  Even short drives are ungodly long when you’re starting out in London.”

“Can you give me an ETA?”

He glanced at the clock on the dashboard.  “By nine p.m. definitely.  Eight-thirty if we’re really lucky.”

That gave us almost two hours.  Two hours alone with Duo with no emergencies, no catastrophes, no life-or-death decisions.  I didn’t know what to say next.

“Even if we hit the traffic jam to end all traffic jams or something and crawl in at ten or eleven, Howard should still be awake,” Duo offered into the silence.

“Howard?”

“Yeah.  He takes care of the place.  Fixes stuff, makes sure the grounds don’t go wild, keeps the cars tuned up.  That sort of thing.”  Duo glanced at me.  “Just don’t expect the place to be all sparkling with cleanliness and shit.  Howie doesn’t do windows.  Or the dusting.  Not sure when he mighta last vacuumed, either.”

“I’ll keep my shoes on indoors.”

“That’s my plan.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

Duo tapped his fingers against the wheel as he pulled into the passing lane to overtake a Mini Cooper that was puttering along.  “A long damn time ago.  Over ten years.”

“But you’re sure Howard’s still there _not-_ cleaning the house?”

“Oh yeah.  He an’ my d—ah, um,” Duo cleared his throat.  “My dad and him were pretty tight.  He used to fly for my grandfather.”

I looked at him.  “Your grandfather had his own pilot?”

“Er, yeah.  I guess traffic around the airport was pretty shitty something like thirty years ago, too.”

I breathed out a chuckle, unable to imagine the kind of lifestyle Duo was reluctantly describing.

“We still have the plane but we don’t use it much anymore.  It’s easier to drive or take the train to Heathrow.”

“Hm,” I remarked, boggling quietly.

“Jesus, I sound like such a dick.  Sorry.”

I laughed.  “No.  I just can’t imagine.”  I could imagine dusty bakkies and potholed trails through the wilderness.  I could imagine spending days on the road, driving in shifts to see about a new job with a potential client.  I could not imagine a lifestyle so stable and extravagant that you could commute to the nearest international airport by private jet plane from your own backyard or nearly.

“Well, thank God the house is gonna be all stuffy and whatever.  It might help balance out the, y’know, hugeness of it.”

“Is it huge?”

“It sure as hell looked like it when I was seven years old.”

His memory was spot on.  When we finally pulled up in the circular drive out front, I could only make out the vaguest outline in the moonlight, but it was at least three stories tall.  That counted as “huge” as far as I was concerned.

It had stopped raining about thirty minutes ago, and the ground was soggy beneath our feet.  We hauled our suitcases up to the front door where Duo pushed a call button.

“Yo!  What can I do ya for?” an old man’s voice barked out of the speaker at us.  I twitched; I’d been expecting someone more refined, sedate, butler-ish, and, er… British.

“It’s Duo, the other Maxwell.  Remember me?”

“Sure, kid!  How’s the braid hangin’?”

“It’s hanging,” Duo replied wryly.  “You gonna open the front door or what?”

“Open the door?  Yeah, I guess I could do that.  For four easy payments of nineteen-ninety-five,” he replied.

Duo snorted.  “You’re not impressing me or my date with that line, dude.”

“A date, huh?  You catch yourself a looker, kid?”

Duo grinned and winked at me.  _“I_ sure think so.”

I felt my face heat.

Howard laughed.  “This I gotta see for myself!”

“Just buzz us through, man!”

“No can do.  Got a short in the wiring somewhere.  Haven’t found it yet.”

Duo complained, “A likely excuse.”

Howard wheezed out a laugh.  “Gimme ten minutes to gimp over there.”

“On your mark, get set, hobble!” Duo replied and released the speaker button.

“You two sound friendly,” I observed as the silence of the countryside settled around us.

Duo chuckled.  “That’s Howard for ya.  Just you wait.”

“Joy.”

When the front door creaked open, the old man’s irreverent humor suddenly made perfect sense.  He was wearing a bright pink, button-down, short-sleeved, collared shirt with a pair of khaki shorts and some battered slops on his bony feet.  His grey hair was too long and stuck straight out on each side like horns bracketing the bald spot on the top of his head.  He wore black sunglasses.  He grinned.

It was like looking at Duo fifty years from now.

I turned my sudden laugh into a cough.

“Hey, Duo!  Damn, kid.  It’s been somethin’ like ten years!”

“I’ve been busy.”

“And this must be your looker,” he continued stepping aside so we could drag ourselves into the foyer.  Or maybe it was large enough to be called a reception hall.  “Howard Schatz,” he said, kicking the door closed and holding out a hand.

I shook it.  “Trowa Barton.”

“You boys hungry?  I got some munchies in the cottage.  You want me to bring ‘em over?”

“Why?  Are the kitchen cupboards bare?”

I felt my lips twitch into a smile and I suddenly understood why Duo had been so amused when I’d said “arse” to Yuy.  Here he was, a staunch supporter of “closets,” using the word “cupboard.”

“’Course not!  If you boys are in the market for canned tuna fish and ramen noodles, knock yourselves out.”

“We’ll manage,” Duo muttered.  “Thanks.”

“All righty, then.  See ya in the morning!”  With a wave, Howard limped back through the house.  We heard the back door open and shut a minute later.

Duo reset the locks on the doors and offered me a nervous smile.  “So.”

“So,” I replied.  Glancing in the direction Howard had gone, I asked, “Doesn’t he know about your father?”  The burial was tomorrow morning, right here on the grounds somewhere.

“Yeah.  He knows.”  Duo looked like he was going to say more but, in the end, just shook his head.  “You want something to eat?”

“Sure.”

We wiped our feet and carried our suitcases into the kitchen where Duo promptly fixed us each a sauce pan of instant noodles.  “Chicken or beef?” he asked holding one steaming pot in each hand.

He sounded just like a flight attendant coming by with the dinner cart.  I didn’t really care one way or the other, but he looked too tired to make a decision.  “Beef.”  I slapped a pair of hand towels on the surface of the wooden butcher’s block in the middle of the brick-lined room.

Duo set a pan down on each folded towel.  After rummaging through the drawers, he handed me a fork and a spoon.  “You want something to drink?  Extra black pepper for the soup?  I think I can find the spices—”

I shook my head and tapped the rim of his soup pot with my fork, calling him to the makeshift table.  He didn’t apologize for being nervous and I didn’t expect him to.  In some ways, he was as much a stranger here as I was.

He shoved his suit sleeves up his forearms.  I shucked my jacket and laid it over my suitcase.  We slurped through our second dinner.  “Man, this stuff is crap,” Duo announced after the third mouthful.

I’d had worse.  “Did you check the expiration date on the packages?”

He sighed.  “No.”

I almost laughed.  “It doesn’t matter.  They always taste like this.”

“You’re just tryin’ to make me feel better,” he grumbled and then gave me a shy smile.  “Thanks.”

Noodles consumed, we dumped our saucepans and eating utensils in the sink.  “I’ll get it later,” Duo promised on a yawn.  “Let’s trek our shit upstairs.”

He wasn’t joking about the trek part.  We hauled our things up three flights of winding stairs to the top floor, emerging in a sitting room boasting sheet-covered furniture that faced a massive brick fireplace.  The house’s wooden beams had been left exposed through the aged plaster of the walls and slanted roof.  The space seemed cramped and cozy even though the residence itself was massive.  It appealed to me greatly.  Duo set his things down next to the top of the stairs and waved me toward a narrow, wood-paneled hallway.

“This one’s yours,” he said, pushing open the second door on the left.  He felt along the wall for the switch and – with a soft yet victorious “Ah-ha!” – light flooded the room from a wrought iron chandelier.  It was a generously proportioned bedroom.  Like the hallway, it was lined with dark wood from floor to ceiling; the panels had been arranged in square sections.  There was a large window with thick glass and abundant, black leading that crisscrossed the panes.  The four-poster bed was positioned so that the morning light would greet the occupant at dawn.

Duo asked, “You want a hand making up the bed?”

“Sure,” I agreed again, setting my things down next to a chest of drawers.  I tracked Duo’s movements as he went over to the enormous antique wardrobe and pulled out a set of linens from the shelf above the hangar bar.  He shook them out and suddenly the whole room smelled of cedar.  Between the two of us, it only took a few minutes to sort out the bed.  He turned on the radiator and fiddled with the window lock, ensuring that it was shut tight.  Duo then checked the attached bathroom, going through the cupboards and pulling out toilet paper, soap, and flannels.  He ran the taps, both hot and cold, lifted the lid on the toilet tank, and finally pronounced the suite habitable.

“But there’s no curtains on the window,” he added.

I shrugged.  I didn’t expect my lingering jetlag from Laos to let me sleep in.

When Duo turned toward the door on a sigh, I didn’t try to block his path.  I didn’t want him to go and I didn’t want him to think that I wanted him to go, but I needed him to be sure that he wanted to stay.  It was a fine line I was treading and I wasn’t even sure if I could see it let alone stay on it.

He hovered in the hall beside the door for a minute and I took the chance to approach him.  “Where’s your room?” I asked softly, almost as if I were afraid he’d bolt for the next county over.

He nodded back the way we’d come.  “Through the sitting room.  The door on the end.”

His fingers curled around the open door and I dared to reach up and stroke his hair on the pretense of taming a few wild strands.  “You can stay here if you want.”

I watched his Adam’s apple bob.  “I—”

That was all he said.  Clearly, he hadn’t made up his mind yet on whether or not he was my kerel here.  I tried to squash my disappointment.  He’d figure it out.  He just needed time.  Smiling softly, I let him go with a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth.  “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”

He nodded.  “G’night, Trowa.”

“Good night.”

The door shut softly and I stood there for a solid minute waiting for it to open again, waiting to see Duo’s bashful smile.  When one minute turned into two, and then three, I distracted myself from the rejection by changing clothes.  I hung the suit up and pulled on my sleepwear.  I brushed my teeth and washed up.  I turned down the quilt, blankets, and sheet but couldn’t bring myself to climb into the massive, cold, and isolated bed by myself.  I was so exhausted my bone marrow was throbbing, but I just couldn’t do it.

With a sigh, I decided to locate Duo’s room for myself.  I’d come up with an excuse for making the trip.  Surely, there was something I could ask him—

I opened the door and almost tripped over my own feet.  Duo was standing in the hall in his pajamas, hands fisted at his sides as if he were seriously considering raising one and knocking on my door.

He looked at me.  I looked at him.

“I’d say I changed my mind,” he began, “but I was kinda hoping you’d invite me in all along.  I don’t know why I left.  That was dumb.”

“You had to put on your pajamas,” I pointed out.

He sighed.  “No, I didn’t.  Coulda stayed and slept in my underwear.”

“You’re really taking this honesty business to heart,” I observed.

“Is it over the top?”

“No,” I replied, stepping back and holding the door open.

He moved over the threshold.  The instant the door closed for the second time, he had his arms around my chest.  His hands fisted in the back of my shirt and he pressed his face against my neck, inhaling deeply.  I pulled him closer.  When his warmth started to lull me to sleep right where I was standing, I shuffled back in the direction of the bed.  Duo followed me and we snuggled down beneath the blankets.  He rolled onto his side, clutching my hand to his chest and I spooned up behind him, carefully arranging his braid so that I wouldn’t pin it to the mattress during the night.

“Are you warm enough?” I whispered.

He nodded.  His fingers tightened around my hand.  A moment passed and then another.  “I love you, too,” he finally whispered back.

I pressed closer to him, molding my front to his back, and kissed his cloth-covered shoulder.  “Ja,” I breathed, choking on too many emotions to name, “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s with Trowa’s sort-of-animosity toward Quatre? Well, I’m borrowing a teeny bit from the series here: Trowa is very reserved and guarded around Quatre when they first meet. (That’s my impression, anyway, and only later does he develop a kind of faith in Quatre as a comrade-in-arms.) In this AU, poor Q-bean is encroaching on Trowa’s “territory.” Trowa doesn’t want anyone to come between him and his best friend/boyfriend… not even a “harmless” pal.
> 
> What kind of work visa does Trowa get? To tell you the truth, I’m purposefully vague and creative on this point because immigration laws are so confusing (and I’m only talking about the US ones; I have no idea about the ones for the UK). For the purpose of this fic, I’m creating a special work visa called a journeyman’s visa which works like an apprentice system. Trowa is too young and under-qualified to get a high priority work visa (and work visas can take months to process), so he’ll be going to the UK and the US as an apprentice to Maxwell Limited. Once his education is complete (i.e., he gets his driver’s license and GED and completes his job training, whatever that entails), he’ll start working for the company. In this imaginary system, Duo (or a senior member of security from Maxwell Limited) will be Trowa’s sponsor. All this will come up in later installments. For now, like Trowa and Duo, I just hand that whole mess off to the lawyers and let them deal with it. That’s what Duo’s paying them for, anyway.
> 
> For the cathedral, I referred to Southwark Cathedral in London. It’s not too grand like St. Paul’s, which is exquisite according to the photos I found online. Wow. Anyway, in order for a funeral service to be held at Southwark Cathedral, you have to live in the parish and/or be a regular attendee. Let’s just imagine that the Maxwells are church benefactors so they get perks like that.
> 
> My inspiration for the Maxwell family home near Colchester, Essex: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35581489.html OMG. The photos of this manor are GORGEOUS. And it really is for sale. If only I had four million pounds…
> 
> If Duo’s grief seems too short or lacking or confusing to you, I say: nice catch! There’s a reason for why I’ve written Duo’s grieving process the way I have and we will get there eventually.


	7. Appearances, Part 3

“Do you ever think God is real?”

I glanced at Duo, a little surprised by this sudden and earnest question.  Although, given where we were standing, perhaps I shouldn’t have been.  This small cemetery at the end of the wooded path exuded the kind of peace that produced profound thoughts.

“I suppose it depends on my luck at the time,” I answered.

Duo chuckled.  “So it’s God and not Murphy’s Law when everything that could go wrong goes freakin’ nuclear?”

“No,” I replied softly, feeling my way through a tangle of words.  Duo had never asked me a question like this before and I didn’t want to speak carelessly.  I didn’t want to make a joke of it even if he was comfortable straddling that line.  I told him, “When one thing goes right, when there’s one moment of perfection in the chaos, I wonder if God is out there.  Maybe not saving us from absolute darkness, but reminding us that there’s still light in the world.”

Duo’s equally cold hand gripped mine.  “Wow.  That’s… deep.”  His lips curled into a sarcastic smile as he glanced from one grave plot to another. 

“Deeper than six feet?” I could have asked but didn’t.  “What about you?” I probed, wondering if he was in the mood to talk or just absorb.

“I dunno,” he said, closing his eyes and lifting his face up to the sunny sky.  It was a beautiful morning, cold and crisp.  In the shadows that clung to the trunks of the barren trees, frost still chilled the bark.  I held onto his hand as if he was at risk of floating away with the high, white wisps of cloud.  “God’s supposed to deliver us, right?  But we all end up here: in death.”

I felt a chill dance over my skin beneath my borrowed sweater and trench coat.  “So life is the aberration and death the destination?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, surprising me.  I hadn’t said it so that he’d agree.  I’d expected him to refute me; I’d hoped he’d push aside the darkness within him that was making him scheme these things.  “Maybe the only god is the God of Death.”

I wouldn’t let him give in to such total despair without a fight.  I challenged, “Then why was life created at all?”

He shrugged.  “Because you can’t have one without the other.  When you think about it, death is the only thing that’s really certain.  Death always wins.”

Hearing Duo speak this way was wrong.  I felt it in depths I hadn’t even suspected I had.  Darkness like this should not have a foothold in a soul as pure as his.  “If that were true,” I argued back, “then there would be no point in goodness, in generosity or hope.”

“Maybe there isn’t.”

Undeniably unsettled now, I took a moment to reply.  “There is evidence to the contrary.”

“Oh, I’m not saying that people aren’t good or generous or whatever.  I think we all have our moments – and genuinely good people are really out there – but I think it’s because of them that we believe in a god who gives a damn about our lives.”  His grin widened and his lashes lifted.  He stared up at the sky until I could see a sheen of tears form and trickle out of the corners of his eyes.  The sun’s glare was merciless even at this early hour.  The breeze kissed the moisture half-dry, half-frozen on his skin.

He chuckled, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling and cracking the crust of his tears.  “Hah.  It’s funny when you think about it.  We create God in our own image and then He remakes us in His.”

He tilted his head down and swept his gaze over the headstones.  Some were so worn they were barely legible.  Others, like the pair we stood in front of now, still looked new.

I read the names and dates again:

_Helen Eliza Maxwell, beloved wife and mother, January 13, 1967 ~ June 24, 2004_

_Sherman Lionel Maxwell, darling son and brother, September 2, 1991 ~ June 24, 2004_

Only one headstone among the crowd _was_ new.  It had been placed beside Lady Helen Maxwell’s.  The grave behind it was empty; a cover had been tastefully arranged over it.  In a few hours, a casket would be resting here as a priest blessed the body, the soul, and ground into which the first would be interred.  A few short hours… and then Duo would be in the presence of his father’s form and figure for the very last time.

I studied the engraving on the stone.  Each line and curve was sharp and dark with shadows this morning:

_Victor Townsend Maxwell, loving husband and father, October 6, 1949 ~ December 19, 2012_

This was Duo’s family, united in death, leaving Duo one out.  A line that Martins was fond of quoting came to me: _“The Lord giveth and He taketh away.”_  Or was Duo right?  Did we give each other hope in the darkness while God took the light from us, one by one, without respite or mercy?  Could it be that the only thing God wanted from each and every one of us was our inevitable death?  It was a disturbing thought to contemplate.

I was still grasping Duo’s hand.  We hadn’t put on gloves before we’d come out here.  My fingers were numb.  I imagined his were, too.  I tucked our joined hands into the pocket of the coat I was wearing.  “We’re not dead yet,” I reminded Duo.

He chuckled.  This time the sound was rueful.  “Yeah.  Sorry.  That was pretty morbid, huh?”

“It’s fine,” I assured him.  I didn’t like hearing him apologize for what he was thinking and feeling.  He did it far too often these days.  “But I’m freezing my arse off.”

He laughed.  “Just wait until we get to New York!”

He swung me back toward the narrow drive and I let him.  The English winter was colder than the ones I was used to, but I wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable with the chill as I let on.  What I was uncomfortable with was the sudden darkness bubbling up from within the man I loved.

“New York can’t be that much colder than this,” I remarked, egging him on, nudging him toward the kind of humor he excelled at.

“Whoa, baby,” Duo replied, his strides rolling with the humor infusing him.  “You have not yet _begun_ to freeze your balls off.”

“And just why am I agreeing to go there, again?”

“Because it’s the American dream?”

“Castration via hypothermia?”

He actually stopped walking and barked out a laugh.  It startled a couple of birds into flight from the scraggly boughs.  “Oh—my—God—Trowa—” he panted.

“Ja?” I prompted, wondering if I dared insert a joke about how it was rude to keep the divine powers in suspense.

He shook his head in amazement.  “You’re the Alfred Pennyworth to my Bruce Wayne.”

“Is that a good thing?”  I could hazard a guess that it was even though I didn’t recognize the names, but I knew he was waiting for me to check.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied.  “Except you’re better in every single category.”

“Hm,” I remarked, unsure of what to say to that.

“Younger,” Duo volunteered.

I supposed that could be a good thing.

“Smarter.”

Definitely a good thing.

“Sexier,” he added brightly.

I glanced sideways at him.  His cheeks were tinged pink and his nose was red.  His lips were stretched into a wide smile and his eyes were sparkling.  I didn’t even stop to think about it; I swung _him_ around, stepping back and using my grip on his hand to bring him crashing into my chest.  I banded my other arm across his waist.

“Am I?” I asked, leaning in to brush the tip of my cold-numbed nose against his.

He nodded slowly, his humor fading into wide-eyed want.  “So much I can’t stand it sometimes.”

That was encouraging.  I smiled and brushed our noses together again, wondering if he’d take the initiative and kiss _me._   He hadn’t been shy about doing so in Egypt, but he’d only kissed me twice since I’d seen him again: once in Vientiane on the day of our departure and once in London last night in the cathedral car park.  I held him close and waited, breath held, plea at the ready.

And then he tilted his chin toward mine.  Our lips touched, slid together, locked chastely in place.  I exhaled, my bare fingers curling against the back of his jacket, finding no handholds to grasp.  He pulled back and I had to force myself to stop following him.  Our lips parted with a prickle that should have been a chill but was somehow hot and swift.

Duo made no move to step away.  He studied my face.  He smiled.  He licked his lips and shifted toward me for a second time.  He’d never kissed me like this before, using his breath and the gentle friction of skin on skin to warm my lips.  He captured my lower lip between his, tugged, touched the tip of his tongue to the fullest part, even nipped at me with his teeth but he didn’t invade my mouth.  It was making me restless and hungry.

“Are you waiting for me to beg?” I demanded breathlessly.

“No,” he breathed.  “I don’t want you to beg.  Just… feel.”

As if I could do anything else around him.  He rendered me a slave to sensation.  Sometimes it was all I could do to keep from touching him in public; I’d long since lost track of the number of times I’d nearly moaned softly when the wind had carried his scent to me; it took a monumental effort to restrain myself from rubbing against him as he lay next to me in bed at night.  I would do virtually anything he wanted.  If he wanted me to feel, I’d feel.

He settled his mouth against mine softly, as if these whispering touches were a language and he was offering up his secrets.  The air was cold but there was heat rising up from the collars of our coats.  The wind was crisp but his warm breath was soothing.  His body was solid and immovable but my own hands were trembling.

A nudge, a brush, a nibble, and a delicate lick – just a taste – before he went back to the beginning and started all over again.  There was no rush here outdoors in the middle of the lane.  If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed that we had all day.  He tried my patience and given the fact that I’d been trained to stay perfectly still, camouflaged in wet, decaying jungle debris for hours at a time, that was saying something.

“Shh,” he breathed, his eyes still closed and lips brushing against mine.  “Let it go, Trowa.  Let go.”

I took a deep breath and released it slowly, feeling myself lean into him, allowing myself to trust him as he trusted me: with my entire being.  I felt his fingers slide into my hair.  His palm fit against the back of my head.  I closed my eyes and I waited.

This time, when he kissed me, I didn’t have to fight against myself.  I gave myself to him.  I followed his lead, kissed him back, conversed in that language of touch without the punctuation of a surging tongue or the plot development of roving hands.

He just… kissed me.

It was just a kiss but, somehow, when he eventually leaned away and I opened my eyes, I felt different.  Despite the chill, I was warm.  Despite my empty stomach, I was full.  Despite our exposed position out on this country lane, I was at peace.

“You want a coffee?” he asked and, instead of shattering the moment, his voice cemented it.

I nodded.

“OK.  Let’s swing by Howie’s place and hit him up for some coffee grounds that haven’t been sitting in a cupboard since Queen Victoria died.”

I chuckled.

“What?”

“You said ‘cupboard’,” I told him.

He laughed.  “Well, _yeah._   Those really short, enclosed shelves with doors on the front are called ‘cupboards’.”

I kept Duo’s hand, still grasped in mine, stuffed inside my pocket and sharing warmth as we walked back to the house and its annexes.  If Duo didn’t like it, he’d pull free.  He never did.

In the light of day, the manor was imposing: four stories tall, an angular sprawl of brick and mortar.  The windows were thick, deeply set, and the black leading set each pane apart like the faceted eyes of an insect.  The whole place put me in mind of a great, red spider, crouching and bristling as we encroached on her territory.

I briefly considered sharing the analogy and grinned when I realized it would probably guarantee that Duo would never set foot on the property again.

“Why don’t you like gogga – insects and things?” I asked him suddenly.

He looked at me, clearly startled by the random question.  “Uh, because they’re creepy?  And they bite?  And they crunch when you squish ‘em?  And then they come back from the dead when you’re not looking, like little pincher-and-mandible-possessed zombies?  Need I go on?”

I chuckled.  “I mean, was there some traumatic event in your childhood involving a spider or a bug?”

“Oh, uh.  I guess you could say that.”

I watched him and waited for him to give in and tell me.  I knew he would.

With a sigh, he did.  “There was this one time Solo put crickets in my bed.  He went around catching them in the evening and then dumped ‘em between my sheets before bedtime while I was brushing my teeth.”

“How old were you?”

“I dunno.  Four?  Five?  Young enough to piss myself when they started crawling all over my toes in the Goddamn dark.”  He shook his head.  “Be thankful you never had an older brother, man.”

“That does seem excessively evil.”

Duo grinned.  “Ask me again – when, y’know, it’s warm and we have a wrestling mat at our disposal – if I know how to fight.”

I remembered posing that question to him back in Egypt.  I made an attempt to bite back my smile.  “I’m guessing one of you got a black eye or a bloody nose that night.”

Duo chuckled.  “More like both of us did.  Mom was _pissed._   I think Dad wanted to take a picture for the family album… but I might not be remembering that right.”

I laughed.  Did he have any idea how amazing he was?  I never laughed.  Unless I was with him.

When we got to the front door of the gardener’s cottage where Howard lived, we found a note waiting for us stuck in the door:

_I got coffee and you’re both welcome to it, just don’t wake an old man up._

“Christ.  My dad once said Howard had to be psychic.”  Duo reached for the handle, pulling the note free as he opened the door.  “But I’m still not sure it’s all natural.”

“Hm?” I asked.

“If he offers you brownies, don’t eat ‘em,” he added cryptically.

The cottage was silent; the old groundskeeper and former pilot was likely still sleeping.  Duo turned on the light in the cramped and windowless kitchen before investigating the contents of the pantry.  He tossed a bag of Oreo cookies onto the small and scarred wooden table in the center of the room and reached for the coffeemaker.

“What are these?” I asked, poking the bag.

Duo grinned.  “Those are safe eats.  Factory sealed retail packaging is your best guarantee against mind-altering substances in _this_ house.”

“Mind-altering?  Howard’s got dagga in here?”

“Dagga?”

I pinched an imaginary cigarette between my fingertips and mimed taking a drag. 

Duo grinned and pulled a sealed container of coffee grounds out of a cupboard.  “Oh, yeah.  I’d bet my braid on it.  And if I ever find out where he’s been growin’ it, I’m gonna have to get all lord-of-the-manor on his skinny ass.” 

That was an interesting scenario to contemplate.  Of course, any scenario involving Duo was one I’d take an interest in.

“You want it dirty?”

 _Dirty?_ I was more or less certain that I’d missed something here.  “What?”

Duo grinned slyly at me over his shoulder.  His fingertips danced over the countertop like he was performing a nocturne.  I gripped the back of the nearest chair to keep from stalking over to him. 

He tilted his head toward the coffeemaker.  “You like it thick, right?”

I ignored the gesture.  My gaze followed the line of his swaying braid down to his ass.  If he’d been facing me, I would have been staring at his crotch.  “Ja,” I answered roughly, suddenly remembering the feel of him in my hand, the way my fingers had curled around his girth and measured his length.  When I looked back up, his grin had faded.  His lips were slack and his eyelids droopy.  There was heat glittering in his eyes.

It was just as well we were in someone else’s kitchen or I might have accepted the invitation, resolution to resist or no.  I turned away to look for coffee cups.  It was either that or imagine what I might have done in the manor house’s kitchen if we’d been alone: I might have lifted Duo up onto that butcher’s block, wrapped his legs around my waist as I pulled his head down for a kiss; I might have bunched up his sweater and T-shirt so I could suck his nipples and taste my way down his belly; I might have torn open the fastenings on his denims and—

“Hey,” he said, his voice rough and tinged with apology.

I didn’t want his apology.  I braced myself in the cupboard doorway.  I didn’t trust myself enough to turn around.

“If I ever…”  My voice encountered an undetected obstacle in my throat.  I had to stop and start over again.  “If I ever do something – touch you – and you don’t like it, I want you to stop me.”

“Tro,” he began, his tone as unsteady as mine, “that – you doin’ something like that and me asking you to stop – that’s never gonna happen.”

I curled my fingers around the edge of the wooden cupboard door.  He didn’t say anything else and I waited until I could hear him fiddling with the coffeemaker again before I let out the breath I’d been holding and finally made myself examine the cupboard’s contents.

I pulled down two coffee cups that were stashed in the back; it was less likely that they were Howard’s favorites.  I rinsed them out with hot water and set them on the counter for Duo to fill.  The pot of coffee he’d just brewed was gone and the machine was percolating again.

“Twice brewed,” Duo explained.  “You brew a pot and then put in fresh grounds and run the coffee through a second time.  It’s called ‘dirty coffee’.”

“Cream or sugar?” I asked.

“Nah,” he answered softly and in a somber tone, “not right now.”

And I somehow knew that he wasn’t just saying no to coffee condiments.

“I gotta get my head cleared out,” he added, still not speaking of coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hating that my control was so weak.  With the right push, Duo could get me to act on my impulses and go against the vow I’d made to myself during the flight to Heathrow: Duo needed to make his own choice as to if (or, dare I hope, _when)_ he wanted me.  I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror if I let him manipulate me into taking that decision out of his hands.

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” he replied quietly.  “I just… I’m all over the frickin’ map.  You’re ninety-nine kinds of awesome for putting up with my shit.”

I drew a breath, uncertain of how to respond to that.

He kept on talking, “I do want you.  In the worst way.  Literally.”  He sighed.  His hands curled around the edge of the counter.  “That’s why I can’t…  But I just can’t help myself sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” I heard myself echo pathetically.

He laughed.  It was harsh and self-depreciating even as it was soft.  We were both mindful of Howard’s presence somewhere in the small house.

“Tro, trust me when I tell you that I don’t say even _half_ the things I could.”

I took half a step closer to him and our elbows brushed.  “Like what?” I murmured at his hair.  I glimpsed his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed.

“I don’t wanna tease you.”

So he _was_ aware that he was doing it.  “Then tell me something real.”  I needed something to hold onto if I couldn’t hold onto him the way I wanted to.

He took a deep breath and let it out.  “I’m yours,” he told me.  “One-hundred percent.  I know you know that.”

Finally, he turned his gaze and looked at me.  “Ja,” I replied.  “I know it.”  And so did he; he _knew_ how he felt about me, that he wanted me, that he wanted to be mine.  That was what I’d been waiting to hear.

I reached out and slid an arm around his waist.  “We look after each other,” I reminded him.

This time, when he smiled, it was subdued but happy.  He poured out our coffee into the mugs and we took seats across from each other at Howard’s table.

“How do these dunk?” I asked, gesturing to the bag of cookies, and Duo gave me a grateful look.

“Let’s find out!”

He tore open the plastic packaging and deftly caught two Oreos between his fingertips before they could roll out onto the tabletop.

I picked up one for myself and examined it as Duo held one suspended in the steaming, black brew in his cup.  I watched as he retrieved it, gave it a cautious nibble, and then popped the whole thing in his mouth.  He gave me a wink and a thumbs up.

With an endorsement like that, I was virtually required to give it a go.  A tentative dunk and a hap later, I decided that Oreos and dirty coffee were best consumed separately.

Duo rolled his eyes but didn’t try to haggle me into giving the combination a second chance.

As I crunched through another Oreo and Duo dunked his with care, I inquired, “What’s going to happen in New York?”

He answered without reservation: “Marshall – Mr. Noventa – is gonna need to sit down with you and talk about the conditions of your visa.  The way he explained it to me, it was like an apprenticeship with the company so you need the equivalent of a guarantor – someone who’s gonna be responsible for you while you’re in the States – and I dunno who that’s gonna be.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“He didn’t get back to me on it before we left for Laos,” he explained.  “And, anyway, you might have some leeway in choosing.  There’s no sense in assigning you a guarantor from Security if you decide you’d rather work in Legal Affairs.”

I flinched with shock.  “Like a lawyer?”

Duo gave me a guileless, wide-eyed look.  “Yeah.”

“Impossible.”

Duo shook his head.  “Nothing’s impossible once you get your GED, Tro.”

I stared at him.

“I’ve looked up the schools that offer GED prep courses,” he continued as I marveled.  “And I think we’d better get you your driver’s license first – I’ve still got all my notes and stuff from my driver’s ed course, so I’ll teach you when we get back – and then you can drop me off at school in the mornings and head over to your classes.”

He took a long swallow of coffee and then, with a grimace, dived back into the Oreo bag for two more cookies to dunk.

“There’s a lot of homework and school stuff I couldn’t send you,” he told me, “so I figure that on the days I’m working and at practice, you could have a tutor come over.  I know someone in the building – real nice lady, a med student whose husband is—”

“Work?” I parroted.  “Practice?”

He bit his lip and looked away.  “Uh, yeah.  I work at a supermarket a couple nights a week.  Or, I used to, anyway.”  He scowled darkly.  “Now I’m probably gonna have company monkeys breathing down my neck about stock options or some shit.”  He shook himself.  “Anyway, no way are they gonna screw with the team practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That’s where I draw the line.”

“Team?” I probed.

He looked down at his coffee cup.  “Uh… swim team,” he mumbled.

I felt faint.  How strange.  I opened my mouth.  When nothing came out, I closed it, licked my lips, took a breath, and opened it again.  Still, nothing came out.

“You’re probably wondering why I never mentioned this before,” he guessed.

He’d guessed incorrectly.  I was picturing him powering through the water, his muscles rippling beneath his flawless skin.  I was imagining the way his biceps would flex and his thighs would bunch as he hauled himself out of the pool.  And then there was the scanty cozzie he likely wore—

“Earth to Trowa?” he called.

I blinked at the hand he was waving in front of my face.

“Here, have a cookie,” he said, offering me the one pinched between his middle and ring fingers.  I took it, still feeling breathless and numb.  “Don’t feel bad.”

“What?”

“Er… don’t be angry?” he tried again.

I was still equally confused.

“…that I’ve been workin’ to, y’know, save up money and pay for… um, stuff?”

My brain was starting to function again.  I thought of the mobile he’d given me.  “Stuff?  Like service contracts?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I thought of all the text messages I’d sent him that he’d responded to hours later with an apologetic sorry-I-forgot-to-charge-my-phone-I’m-a-moron-how-are-you?  It had been happening at least twice a month – usually on his Friday nights – ever since we’d started keeping in touch almost daily.  Once or twice, I’d wondered if he was seeing someone, but he’d never given me any indication of that.  Whenever I’d gotten up the nerve to subtly inquire about his friends, he’d mentioned a girl named Hilde (who was dating another girl named Dorothy) but he’d never talked about anyone else.  And then three weeks ago, when he’d invited me to live with him, when he’d feared I was about to break up with him…  Ja, I’d been surprised, relieved, and vindicated.  In that order.  I mean, he’d always been enthusiastic to hear from me and I’d known he cared about me and I’d prayed that our friendship meant to him what it meant to me, but all those times I’d tried to reach him and he’d been unavailable had made me think that maybe…

I reached across the table and grabbed his hand, pulling his arm toward me.  His jacket sleeve rode up his pale forearm and I placed a kiss on the inside of his wrist.  He gasped.

“You should have told me,” I murmured.

“I didn’t want you to stop texting me,” he rasped in reply.  “I thought you might if you found out I was working part-time to pay the bill for it.”

I looked up at him through my brows.  “I couldn’t have stopped.”  I was addicted to him.  To prove this, I opened my mouth and pressed the tip of my tongue to the blue shadow of the vein in his wrist before kissing the same spot and exhaling over the damp skin.  His fingers twitched and he shifted tellingly in his seat.

“Hmm, Trowa…” he breathed.

I drew the tip of my nose up his hand and nipped the base of his thumb.

“You boys better not be dunkin’ anythin’ else ‘cept them Oreos.”

Duo jerked.

My fingers tightened reflexively around his arm before I hastily released him.  We both looked up and there was Howard standing in the doorway in a bright green bathrobe with what looked like white and black llamas printed all over it.  He was still wearing the shades and slops.

“Jesus, Howard,” Duo complained.  “Hell of a way to say good morning.”

He ignored the jab.  “You boys better get tested before you go in for a lay-up an’ a slam dunk is all I’m sayin’,” he lectured.  “Too many diseases out there that’ll kill ya, rot your brain, or make your pecker fall off.”

Duo hid his face in his hands.  “God, no.  You are not trying to give us a sex talk.  Fate would not be this cruel.  This all a bad dream.  I’m going wake up now and everything will be normal.  K’thanks.”

“This ain’t a sex talk.  It’s a _smart_ talk.  And your daddy would kick my ass outta heaven if I let it go without sayin’ a word.”

“Was that the conclusion?” Duo checked, his tone pitching past hopeful and ito desperate.  “I think that was the conclusion,” he declared without waiting for a response.  He stood up and pushed his chair in with a loud clatter.  “Great speech, Howard.  Thanks for the coffee.”

“You leave me any?”

Duo pointed to the pot.  “Smell it for yourself.”

He sniffed the air.  “Is it filthy?”

“Just garden-gnome-variety dirty.”

Howard snorted with contempt and stomped over to the counter where he set about changing the coffee filters.  Duo motioned me toward the door and I grabbed a couple of Oreos for the road before I followed him outside.  I knew I ought to thank Howard for letting us drink his coffee, but it seemed too great a risk: there might be some other advice he’d remember to give us.

I glanced back as the door swung shut and glimpsed Howard pouring the brewed coffee back into the maker’s kettle for a third round.

“That didn’t happen,” Duo assured me.

I passed him an Oreo.  “I’m pretty sure it did.”  And I was pretty sure Howard’d had a valid point.  We owed it to each other to get tested before we… ah, beforehand.

“No, don’t turn into a realist on me now, Tro.”

I waited until we’d gone into the house and reached the top of the stairs to reply.  In the sitting room on the top floor, I reached under Duo’s jacket hem and snagged one of his back pockets, hooking my index finger into the fold of denim and pulling him to a halt.  “He’s right, you know.”

He didn’t turn around and look at me.  He sighed.  “Yeah.  I know.”

I stepped up behind him.  I knew I should be keeping my distance, but I just… couldn’t.  I slid an arm across his chest and hugged him to me, tracing the outer shell of his ear with my nose.  He let out a breath and relaxed.  I wrapped my other arm around his waist.  I knew we had to get dressed; the hearse would be arriving soon along with the priest, but I didn’t want to let him go.  When this moment ended, grief would creep back into his eyes, lines of stress would dig trenches on either side of his lush mouth, an invisible weight would hunch his shoulders.  I was compelled to drive those pains away from him even though I knew they were inevitable.

He leaned his head back against my shoulder.  “Can you dance?” he asked suddenly.

“No.”  I spoke to the soft, fragrant skin of his neck.

“Ever tried?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I think you’d be good at it.”

“Hm.”  I didn’t really care one way or the other if I was.  “Are you?”

He shrugged.  “Decent, I guess.”

His modesty didn’t fool me.  I pressed my face against his neck as his fingertips danced over my scarred knuckles, tapping and caressing, dipping into the sensitive spaces between my fingers.  “Stop it, damn you,” I growled, clamping down on a wave of arousal.

“Hey, I’m just standing here minding my own business,” he retorted playfully.

I sighed.  “I’m not ready to let you go.”

“I’m not going very far.”

I knew that, but— “You’re going to put on your mask again.”

He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand me.  “You’ve got one, too.”

“I despise both equally.”  Three years ago, I probably wouldn’t have bothered confess to hating something.  Emotions were felt, and then dealt with quietly and swiftly, like an enemy.  Dwelling on them, examining them, and dissecting them was a waste of time and a distraction.  From a mercenary’s point of view, it was arguable that Duo was a bad influence on me.

He said, “You look pretty good in it, though.”

So did he.  He’d look better _out_ of it, I was sure.  “I almost don’t recognize you when you’re Dominic,” I admitted.

His hands clutched mine.  “But you _do_ recognize me.”

I nodded.  I had to listen past his perfect speech patterns, look beyond the perfect gentleman’s posture, reach through his perfectly unreadable expression and _then_ I could find Duo looking back at me, _seeing_ me.

“Sometimes I think I could get lost in the role,” he admitted.

“You won’t,” I promised.  I wouldn’t let him.  But I knew it wouldn’t come to that.  Duo was more than strong enough to withstand the pressures of being his father’s son while maintaining his personal integrity, his quirks and humor, his brilliance and generosity.  He had more  _gees_  than anyone I’d ever met.

“You’re strong,” I told him, pressing a kiss to his jaw and then forcing my arms to retreat from around his torso.

I stepped back and glanced in the direction of my room and the suit I was destined to suffer at least one more time.  Duo grabbed my hand before I could move in the direction of the door.

“Wear the tie I picked out?” he requested shyly.

Of course I would but, charmed as I was by his earnest expression, I hesitated too long.

“I’ll owe you a kiss,” he bargained.

I was too much of a mercenary to refuse.  “Done,” I agreed, trailing a fingertip over his lips in silent anticipation.

We parted ways.  I was well-versed in donning a suit by now, but the tie was made from a slippery fabric that slithered its way into being too long or too short or thwarted me by collapsing into a too-small knot at the base of my throat.

Bugger and fuck.

As I was fumbling through my sixth attempt at tying the bloody thing, I heard the sounds of car tires on gravel.  Glancing out the window, I spotted Howard as he emerged from his cottage in his suspenders and shirtsleeves.  And sunglasses.

He gestured the arriving hearse toward the lane which led to the family graveyard and shook hands with the clergyman who climbed out of the passenger side of the car.  I couldn’t hear what they were saying but, as Howard invited the man into his home, he threw a pointed look up at my window.

I sidled out of view before I realized that my caution was unnecessary.  Howard was clearly waiting for us to come down.  And, as Duo was a master at the art of suit-wearing, it was probably just me and this fokken necktie that was holding everyone up.

I grabbed my suit jacket and the trench coat I suspected had once belonged to a young Victor Maxwell.  As I charged out of my room, I yanked the substandard knot out of my tie.  I’d conserve my patience for more worthy pursuits.

“Help,” I growled.

Duo looked up from the stairway banister he was leaning nonchalantly against and his gaze zoomed right to the enemy I hadn’t been able to subdue.

He flashed me a charmingly crooked smile.  “OK, but it’s gonna cost ya.”

“Add it to my tab.”  I doubted I’d notice if he actually collected on it.

Chuckling warmly, he made quick work of the necktie, handing the slippery silk with skill and dexterity that would surely be useful in a variety of other activities.  I gritted my teeth and focused on holding still.

“What’s the damage?”  I couldn’t help asking as he surveyed me with eyes that were sparkling with appreciation.

His fingers nudged the knot neatly into my collar.  Snug, but not confining.

“Whoa no,” he objected.  “I’m keepin’ this one in reserve.”

As if he’d need to.  It amused me to think he needed the guarantee.  After all of the things he’d given me – assistance with a doff necktie the _least_ among them – how could he ever think that I’d outright refuse him anything he asked of me?

He pivoted smartly, looking exceptionally pleased with himself, and started down the wooden steps.  I followed his lead back to Howard’s place and stood back while he knocked on the door.  Introductions were made, hands were shaken, condolences offered, and then we set a course for the cemetery where the hearse had been parked.

“The four of us should be able to manage,” the driver announced upon our arrival as he opened the back door of the car.  It occurred to me then that we’d have to transport the casket to the gravesite.  “If you’ll navigate us, Father?” the man continued, excusing the elderly priest from manual labor.

I wracked my brain for an excuse to exclude Duo; it was unjust that he would have to help carry his own father’s casket.  But, before I could think of another task for him to perform, he reached for the nearest handle, grasping it with white-knuckled determination.  His eyes were dark again and his mouth pinched into a thin, tense line.  A frown of pain drew his brows low.  He looked so determined now.  Desperate.  If only pure will had been enough to save his father.  If that had been possible, Duo would have managed it.  Of that I had no doubt at all.

I grasped the handle opposite Duo.  Howard and the driver took the remaining two at the other end of the casket.  The priest guided us over to the platform which had been set up.  We pretended we didn’t see the sail-covered mound of earth just a few paces away.

The priest said his piece.  I was too busy trying not to smother Duo with my concern to really pay attention to the blessings and ceremony.

“Would anyone like to say a few words?” I dimly heard him invite.

Howard stepped forward and the sound of his raspy voice surprised me enough to tear my sidelong gaze away from Duo’s still-dry and unfocused eyes.

“VT was one of them quiet ones,” he informed everyone present, the casket included.  “An’ you know what they say ‘bout the quiet ones.  It was true in his case.  Smart guy.  Loyal.  Hell, he had my back more times than I can count, more times than he should’ve.  That’s how he got the scar on his jaw.  Took a punch meant for me in a bar fight.”  Howard chuckled.  “Those were the days…”

I listened, tracking Duo’s every breath.

“He was in the Glee Club at school.  And theater.  I saw him once in a local showing of _Romeo and Juliet._   I think he was that Mercutio guy.  He was good.  Real good.  Gave it up when his daddy died.  He was a damn good businessman, but he was one hell of an actor.”

Howard spoke more, occasionally covering up a lump in his throat with a dry cough.  I watched Duo as Howard talked about the man his father had been before Duo had been born.  Strangely enough, I could reconcile Howard’s memories with the man I’d seen at the dig site in Egypt.  I hadn’t been able to integrate the version of him that his associates had lauded the evening before in London, but a hell-raiser, a charmer, an artist… these meshed rather than conflicted with my own impressions.

It was only when the priest acknowledged the speech with a soft “Thank you, Mr. Schatz” that I realized he’d stopped speaking.  I glanced up.  Howard was staring at me.  I couldn’t see his eyes through his black-lensed sunglasses, but I could feel his gaze boring into me.

I didn’t have to glance at Duo to know he wouldn’t volunteer.  I cleared my throat, feeling oddly obligated to speak.  Not because Howard was silently insisting, but because I’d been there when Duo’s father had died, because I was partly responsible for his death, because Duo had loved him and I loved Duo and there was part of that man inside him.  I could see that and I think Duo had a right to see it, too.

“Lord Victor Maxwell and I were never formally introduced,” I began.  “I remember when I saw him for the first time.  He was confident, distinguished, cultured.”

I paused to swallow, to gather my thoughts, to remember the unsent text message on my mobile.  Drawing a deep breath, I angled my chin toward Duo, speaking to him.  “I knew him through his son.”

Duo looked up and met my gaze.

I continued, “I knew he had to be an extraordinary man to inspire so much love and devotion in someone like Duo: wild, charming, independent, brilliant, generous.”

He stared at me, his eyes wide with amazement.  I offered him a shy smile.  He truly was all those things.  They’d been there, lounging on that bough with him when he’d startled me that night at the excavation site.  I hadn’t known what to make of him then but, little by little he’d let me in on his secrets, his enigmas, his world.  There was more I could say, but it was for his ears alone.

A long moment passed before Duo took a deep breath.  He opened his mouth.  I wondered if he was ready to speak of his father’s passing now, if he was ready to let him go.

His gaze didn’t waver from mine.

“Take me back to the house,” he rasped.

Uncaring of our audience, I tucked him up tight against my side.  He was shivering but I knew it wasn’t from the air which, despite being nicely toasted by sunshine, was clinging to its chill with dogged persistence.  I wondered if this was it: was this the moment when grief shattered him?  I waited for it, holding onto him tightly, taking the journey back to the house one measured step at a time down the lane and then past the enormous stables complex.

But when we reached the back door of the manor, Duo stopped in his tracks.  “I feel like driving,” he announced and waited for me to relent.  I loosened my arm around him and we walked over to the car.  Duo dug his keys out of his jacket pocket and unlocked the doors with the remote.  He then forgot to put his seatbelt on before putting the car in gear and tearing down the driveway.

“Duo, stop,” I said as we approached the main road.

He lifted his foot off the gas with obvious reluctance and applied the brake.  He had to step on it in order to keep the nose of the car from edging out onto the winding, country road.  There was no traffic that I could see or hear, but there might have been.

“What?” he asked, strangling the steering wheel.  He was clearly irritated that I’d interrupted his high octane getaway.

I reached across him and, grasping his seatbelt, I drew it over his body and inserted the tab into the buckle, waiting until I felt it catch before I lifted a hand to his jaw.  “We look after each other,” I reminded him, urged him to trust me to catch him.

He blew out a breath and a smile wobbled across his lips.  “Makin’ sure I don’t do anything stupid… that’s a full-time job, Tro.”

“How’s the pay?”

“Hah!  What are you, a mercenary or somethin’?”

“Or something,” I replied wryly.

“Yeah,” Duo agreed, catching my fingers before my hand could fall away from his face.  “You’re somethin’, all right.”

He needed both hands for driving, otherwise I would have kept our fingers tangled on the armrest between the seats.

“You have any requests for lunch?” he asked as he pulled out onto the road and shifted into second gear.

“Someplace quiet,” I said.  We found a pub along the side of the road just outside Colchester that had a single car out front and a chalkboard announcing the daily specials propped up next to the door.  Duo pulled in and parked.

The pub was very quiet.  So quiet that when Duo’s mobile vibrated in his jacket pocket, I could hear it.

“Yeah, Howard?” he murmured, not bothering to get up from our table and excuse himself from the general public.  The only other customer was an older guy at the far end of the bar who was nursing a beer and watching some old black and white movie on the communal telly.

“Did we leave you guys shorthanded?” Duo asked.

He could only be speaking of the burial itself.  I concealed a wince behind my hair.

“Oh.  No, that’s fine.  Tell the crew to go ahead.  I’m sure they’ve got other things to do today.”

It was a relief that Duo wouldn’t be asked to _bury_ his father on top of everything else.

“Damn it, Howard, it’s _fine,”_ he hissed and I wondered at the lecture the old man was giving him now.  “We’ll see ya later.”

He hung up, probably cutting Howard off mid-sentence.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbled.  Then he went a step further and shut his phone off before sliding it back into his pocket.

I tapped my fingers against the side of my glass of club soda, scheming a way to suss out exactly what Howard must have said.  The last thing I wanted was a gavtol Duo on my hands.  In the end, I just decided to ask.

“What was that about?”

Duo shrugged and glared at the telly.  “Man, old age makes people think they can get away with all kinds of shit.”

“Hm?” I prompted as neutrally as possible.

“Other people have a life, y’know.  Schedules.  They can’t wait around all damn day.”

I grunted just to see if he’d volunteer anything else.

“It’s a wonderful life,” he said, almost sneering at the program being broadcast.  “They show this damn thing every freakin’ year.  I bet Jimmy Stewart never saw the royalties when he was alive.”

“The movie?” I guessed.

“You haven’t seen it?”

I shook my head.  “You’ve seen it too many times?”

“Yeah.  I even know useless trivia about it.  Hey, let’s go into town for marshmallows after this.”

Sometimes, having a conversation with Duo was like trying to dodge bullets from a machine gun.  “Marshmallows?”

He nodded.  “We can start a fire and toast us some marshmallows later.  You ever had smores?”

“Which are?”

He described them as graham cracker and melted marshmallow sarmies – “Of course, you gotta add chocolate ‘cuz that just makes ‘em awesomer” – and I had to admit that it was a food I was unfamiliar with.

The hot ham sarmies we’d ordered for lunch here were good, and we’d both opted for chips instead of crisps to go with them, but the way Duo was clinging to every topic except his father’s funeral made me think that he’d refortified his trench of denial.  Bugger.  With the mental equivalent of a sigh, I gave in.

“Quatre Raberba Winner,” I announced, wondering if he could think as fast on his feet when he was on the receiving end of a sudden topic change.

He arched a brow at me.  “Uh, my name’s _Duo,_ in case you’ve forgotten.”

I kicked him under the table.  “Har har.”

He smirked.

“Are you going to make me ask?”

“Naw, I wouldn’t do that to ya,” he answered, wiping his mouth with his serviette and clearing his throat.  “But I’ll warn ya: Quatre’s story is _out there._   I mean, whoa.  Like, only a king of a small country in the Middle East could pull off this shit.”

Still chewing on a hap of ham, I gave Duo a look, urging him to get to the point.

Duo grinned.  “Right.  OK.  Quatre: the poor guy’s got twenty-nine older sisters.”

I almost choked.  “The sheikh has a harem?” I guessed after I’d successfully swallowed.

“Hm, that’s one word for it.”  Duo leaned back in his chair and picked up a slice of fried potato.  “See, once upon a time there was this Qatari prince who had an older sister who was made of awesome.  She wanted to go into medicine and become a surgeon, but their father pretty much told her that if she didn’t marry the husband he’d picked out for her, he’d disown her and she’d never see her brother again.”

“Harsh,” I commented.

Duo didn’t disagree.  “So, she stayed, got married, and then tried to use her husband and father’s connections to start a movement for women’s rights.  That’s probably what got her killed.”

“By whom?”

Pursing his lips, he speculated, “Probably her father.  Possibly her husband.  That’s what everyone assumes, anyway.”

I didn’t have a response to that.  I’d heard of similar occurrences in Africa: there were stories about women who had somehow shamed their households and been sent away… or simply disappeared.  I summarized, “So, Sheikh Raberba Winner is out for vengeance?”

“Hm, yeah.  I like the sound of that.  Vengeance.”  Duo rolled the word on his tongue, purring it until it hissed between his teeth.

I braced myself for a reemergence of that unsettling darkness that had possessed him earlier.  But all was calm on that front.

He merely picked up the thread of the story again.  “After his old man died, he met and married Katrine du Monde – Quatre’s mother.  She grew up in Saudi Arabia where her father was the Ambassador to France, so she’d seen a lot of women like the sheikh’s sister and she was all for changing the system, but even a king and queen can’t just, y’know, _order_ society to change and everything’s suddenly hunky-dory.  So they brought something like a dozen surrogate mothers into the royal family – as a kind of harem – and they ended up with twenty-nine daughters.”

“Twenty-nine girls?” I checked.  “That can’t be chance.”

Duo nodded in agreement, tapping the potato slice he was still holding against the edge of his plate.  “Yeah.  That’s where things get weird.  Nobody’s got any proof, but everyone’s pretty sure it was deliberate.  Lotsa people think that’s unethical.  Y’know, using medical technology to dictate the gender of your own children.”

I’d never thought about it before and I was surprised to realize that the concept bothered me: what if my own mother and father – whoever they were or had been – had engineered me to be a girl?  Growing up an orphaned female in war-torn southern Africa would have been—

I twitched my chin to the side just to shake the thought out of my head.

“But, controversial as it is,” Duo continued, “it seems to be working.  At least as long as the sheikh is in power.  His daughters are all over the upper echelons of Qatari society: I think one’s a university president, there are a couple of expert surgeons, an ambassador or three, company executives in the petroleum and banking sectors… you name it and there’s a Winner heiress in charge of it.”

I felt my eyes narrow as I did the math.  “They’re all significantly older than Quatre?”

“Yup.  I guess his father decided he needed a male heir after all.  Y’know, to take over some day.  He probably figured that having a son would be the best way to instill his political views in his successor so that all his hard work wouldn’t be undone by the next sheikh.”

“That’s cold,” I observed.

Duo shrugged.  “I’ve only met the sheikh once – at a business meeting last year – and he seemed like a decent guy.  Besides, I’m only passing on what I’ve heard.  I’m not surprised that it sounds so calculated.  Gossip puts that kinda spin on things.  But Quatre’s a great guy.  No way could a heartless sonuvabitch raise a kid like that.”

My fingers started to curl into fists atop the table.  I forced back the surge of jealousy.  “You two spoke for a long time at the airport in Bangkok,” I remarked, probing deeper.

“Yeah, a little over an hour.  He’s different from what people say about him, but I guess that’s true for almost anyone who’s a household name.”  Duo dragged the abused chip through the dollop of ketchup and started stamping chip-shaped, ketchup prints around the rim of the plate.  “Yeah.  Nice guy.  Not so interested in being a sheikh and running an IT company.  He’s studying information systems and robotics in Paris.”

Duo’s eyes unfocused and his mouth curved into a smile.  “I kinda wonder what it would take to get him to intern with the company this summer.  Maybe in the R&D engineering division.”

I decided that I did not like that wistful smile on Duo’s face when he thought of Quatre Raberba Winner.  I didn’t like it at all.

“Hey,” Duo suddenly said, pulling me back to the here and now and away from the dark alleys of my mind where I was lying in wait for the interloper in my territory to wander past.  “That’s something else you could do if you wanted.”

“Have a harem?” I heard myself say out of petty spite.

Duo just laughed.  “No, man.  Engineering.  Or research stuff.  I never asked what you were interested in.”

I just shook my head; it was impossible for the darkness in me to linger for long in the face of his humor-filled eyes and the smile that was now just for me.

“Never thought about it.”  Nor could I answer the question he was indirectly asking; I didn’t know my preferences when it came to work.  It was a shock to realize that I was precisely where Duo had warned me I’d be if I’d been born into a family like his: here I was faced with the rest of my life and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it.  I actually had to make a choice.  The field was wide open and it made me feel exposed and vulnerable.

“Hm,” Duo hummed.  “We may have to hit up Hollywood for some reference material.”  At my pointed look, he elaborated, “Movies: the window into the ideal world of professional development.  Most of it’s crap, but it should give you some general ideas about your options.  I’ll add regular movie nights to our agenda.”

“After driver’s education sessions?”

“Yup.  Speaking of which, I don’t think it’ll take long for you to study up for the written test.  And as long as you stay on the right side of the road and manage a decent parallel parking job, the course should be a breeze.  Maybe two weeks, tops, and you’ll be cruising the streets of New York, trading insults with the cabbies from Zimbabwe or Nicaragua or wherever.”

The image was amusing for all of one second until it occurred to me that I might like driving enough to choose that for a career.  If I were Duo’s driver, I’d go wherever he went.  But, no.  Once he got on a plane, I’d be stuck in New York until he got back.  I didn’t want to limit my time with him that way.  As his assistant, however, I’d go where he went and I’d be close enough to keep an eye out for Khushrenada, but I was assuming that Duo would give up his dreams and devote his life to the company, just like his father had.  I couldn’t let myself start thinking that way and neither could he.

“Duo,” I said softly.  He looked up from connecting the ketchup dots to each other, like he was outlining the constellations.  “You can do what you want, too.  Go to school for Egyptology.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment.  I watched his throat work as he swallowed.  “Yeah.  Yeah, that’s still the plan.”

“What can I do?” I offered.

He grinned ruefully.  “Find me a kick ass CEO?”

He’d meant it as a joke, but…  “Could I do something like that?  Be a CEO?”

Duo gaped at me with complete and utter shock and amazement.  I couldn’t recall ever seeing that particular expression on his face.  It was oddly gratifying.  “You would…?  For me?”

I would die for him.  Being a CEO might be a fate worse than death, but I’d do my best if that was what he needed from me.  I nodded.

He hauled in a breath, forced it out, blinked several times; he looked shaken.  “Damn, Tro.  _Damn.”_

I waited, braced for his response.  Eventually, he gave it.

“I don’t have any doubt that you could kick ass at any job you wanted, but no,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m not gonna saddle you with that mess of headaches.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“You’re gonna do something that you wanna do,” he promised me, “not something you could do… or something you wanna save me from.”

I leaned forward.  “Just promise me you won’t let yourself give up on what _you_ want.”

“I’m not givin’ up,” he swore, his grin sly and slightly crooked.  “That’s not my style.”

I knew it for a fact, but it sounded even better when he said the words aloud.

As he paid the bill, Duo hit up the pub master for directions to a grocer’s.  When we got there, the store was so deserted we could hear the pair of on-duty clerks exclaiming over the scandalous engagement of someone I’d never heard of to someone else I’d never heard of.  They were probably famous actors or singers.  I didn’t care enough to ask Duo.

“Toss in whatever jumps out at ya,” Duo invited as a bag of jumbo marshmallows plopped into the shopping basket.  He added a box of graham crackers, a package of fat sausages, some stainless steel kebab skewers, a bag of tortilla chips, and a jar of salsa before he pointed us down the beverage aisle.

He then stood and looked at me expectantly.  Oh.  I supposed it was my turn.  I selected a two-liter bottle of water.  Duo rolled his eyes.  I kept the water and grabbed something that looked toxic.  Duo grinned.  Mission: accomplished.

Howard was waiting for us when we got back to the house, scowling darkly.  “You turned your phone off,” he accused.

“Yup,” Duo agreed, hauling the shopping bags out of the back and heading for the door without pause.

Howard reached me before I could make my way around to the other side of the car.  “You flying back tomorrow?”

I didn’t know.  “Duo?” I called.

“Yup,” he repeated and slammed his way into the manor.

Howard sighed.  “You gonna be hangin’ around for a while there, Trowa?”

“Around Duo?”

He nodded.

“Ja.”  I braced myself for an ultimatum.

“Good.”

I blinked.  Howard’s approval was welcome and unexpected given that I was sure public opinion would be the polar opposite.

“He ain’t said goodbye to his daddy,” he informed me.  “Sooner ‘r later, he’s gonna regret that.”

“Ja,” I agreed.

“Don’t ya be lettin’ him blame _you_ for it.  Y’hear?”

I responded with a nod, unsettled by Howard’s keen observations and moved by his concern.  I held out my hand.  “Thanks for the coffee and the Oreos and… earlier,” I generalized.

He nodded.  “He don’t need a babysitter, mind, but look after Duo, eh?”

Nothing short of death would stop me.  We shook on it and I headed inside.  Following the bangs and splashes, I found Duo in the kitchen washing up our pans from the night before.  He was still wearing his suit.  The sleeves were pushed up his arms and bunched up above his elbows.  His braid swished to and fro along with his movements.

_Befokken lekker._

I distracted myself by flattening and folding up the emptied plastic shopping bags that had been tossed onto the butcher’s block.

“It’s too early for dinner,” Duo remarked randomly.

“Ja.”

“But we could bring some wood upstairs for a fire.”

I shrugged.

He handed me a dripping saucepan and a towel.  “This’ll go faster if you dry.”

So I dried.

There was a woodpile just outside the kitchen door.  Duo loaded up a heavy, mesh bag and then introduced me to the manor’s dumbwaiter.  “Damn, I probably won’t fit in this thing now.”

“Were you hoping to?”

He chuckled.  “Nah.  I was just remembering the last time I was here.  I thought this thing was the coolest gizmo ever.”

As far as dinges went, it was fairly convenient.  Using the archaic pulley system, we sent the kindling up to the fourth floor.

“Is it just me or have these stairs multiplied since we arrived?” Duo asked me on the third landing.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” I admitted.

“Watching my ass again?”

“It’s a very nice arse.”

He laughed.

Duo invited me down to his room with a nod in that direction.  He didn’t ask me what my room had looked like when I was a kid; he had to have guessed that I’d never had one.  His was captivating.  There were model cars and wooden dinosaur skeleton models.  There was a kite that had an illustration of a Japanese samurai on it tacked to the wall and a pennant for the New York Yankees not half a meter away.  There was a telescope and an empty terrarium, a basketball and a pair of boy’s roller skates.

“What used to be in here?” I asked, stopping by the grungy aquarium and tapping the dusty glass.

“A turtle that I caught down by the pond.  Never warmed up to me.”

I found that hard to believe.  Duo could charm anything, man or beast.

He said, “Had to release him back into the wild before the end of the summer.”

“Did you come here every year?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said.  “Up until I was seven.  Then we started taking more trips to see dig sites and ruins and stuff.”

I poked my head in a door that was slightly ajar.  “Now this is a closet,” I told him, nudging the opening wider with the toe of my shoe.  Clearly, it served as a wardrobe, but it was large enough to be its own room.

Duo chuckled.  “It was a good size for building forts.”

“Forts?”

“Yeah.”  He reached up over my head and grabbed an old blanket off the shelf.  The next thing I knew, Duo was directing me to tie a corner of it over the hangar bar and, ten minutes later, I was sitting on the pillow-strewn floor of our “fort” – still wearing my suit – as Duo rummaged through a box for flashlights and comic books.

We spent the afternoon hiding from the universe, kicking our stockinged feet together as we lay, side-by-side on our bellies and elbows, paging through one comic after another.

“So that’s Hawkeye,” I observed at one point, eying the illustration critically.  I remembered when Duo had called me by that name, but I couldn’t see a resemblance.

“Yup.”

“I’ve never used a bow and arrow.”

“So?”

“What do we have in common?”  I certainly wasn’t a super hero.  Not in any version of events.

Duo grinned.  “His name’s Barton.”

“No.”

“Oh, yeah.”

I scoffed.  “Coincidence.”

“Maybe,” he drawled.

After the sun had set and our bellies had started growling for attention, we wrestled the kindling onto the hearth and manhandled the fireplace flue open.  Duo found a pack of matches and I got the fire going while he contemplated the dimensions of the dumbwaiter.

Suspecting what he was scheming, I said, “Take your mobile.  You can call and tell me when you get stuck.”

“So you can come down and help me get unstuck?” he guessed innocently.

“Right.  After I get done laughing my arse off and taking photos.”

“Would you really do something that heartless?”

I chuckled darkly.

“Huh,” Duo remarked.  “’Nuff said.”

If he was going to do something as doff as contort himself into a confined space, then I was never going to let him forget about it.

“Maybe after I attain my yoga mastery,” he muttered as he started down the stairs to retrieve our provisions from the kitchen on the first floor.  God, he was such a goof.  Besides, laughing at him was safer than letting myself imagine what I’d do with his post-yoga-mastery, limber body.

Duo sent up the groceries in the dumbwaiter and then huffed and puffed with comical exaggeration back up the stairs.  We changed out of our suits and set up camp in front of the hearth in the sitting room.  While the sausages were sizzling on their skewers over the fire, I fiddled with a wooden crocodile skeleton model that I’d spotted – still in the box – on a shelf in Duo’s room.  The fourth or fifth time I’d glanced at it, Duo had reached up, blown the dust off of the cover, and tossed the thing to me.

“Knock yourself out, man,” he’d invited with a grin.

I’d never built a toy model of anything before so, more than once, Duo called my attention and gestured the right way to detach the individual parts from the wooden sheet.  Mostly, though, he just watched me fumble through it, taking one swig after another from his bottle of carbonated poison.  I stuck to water.

I didn’t realize I was smiling until he offered to hold various pieces of the model’s backbone in place while I applied the glue.  We exchanged grins in silence interspersed with the crackling of the fire, the popping of the splitting wood, and the sizzling of fat-dripping sausages.  When the crocodile was finished, I set it on the raised brick hearth and said to Duo, “You name it.”

“It is a he or a she?” he asked, not the least bit surprised by my ridiculous request.

“She,” I replied, contrarily choosing the opposite of my first inclination.

“Hmmm…  Mildred,” he decided and I laughed.

We ate our way through the sausages, munched on the chips, and dripped salsa on our pant legs.  “How old are we, again?” I checked as Duo poked and giggled at the newest addition to my increasingly tomato-sauce splattered cargo pants.  He claimed the stain was in the shape of a bunny rabbit.

“No idea.  Why?  Is it important?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

He taught me how to make smores.  I preferred them without chocolate. 

Duo wasn’t deterred, however.  “In no time at all, we’ll have your sugar tolerance built up.”

That was not something I was particularly hoping to achieve and I told him so.

“Dude.  We’re flying to America tomorrow afternoon.  America – land of the processed, artificial-colors-and-preservatives-added carbohydrate.  It’s, like, inevitable.”

“Bugger,” I muttered, rotating the marshmallow I was roasting with precision.  I could only assume that Duo was as trim and fit as he was because his body was accustomed to metabolizing that kind of kak.  “When I weigh a hundred and fifty kilos, does that mean I’ll get a shot at playing American football?”

Duo laughed.  “Baby, I’m gonna keep you so damn busy, you’re not gonna have the chance to find out.”

I felt myself blush in response to his wide, sexy smile.  “Promises, promises,” I muttered, my heart beating fast and my palms sweating.

Duo lifted his half-empty bottle of Mr. Pibb and proposed a toast, “To following through on promises.”

I bounced the neck of the bottle of water against his not-cold cooldrink.

“Hey, what time is it?” he asked suddenly but gently.

I checked my wristwatch.  “It’s just gone midnight,” I told him.

He sat his beverage bottle down and leaned across the distance between us.  Feathering my hair out of my face, he breathed against my lips as I sat there spellbound, “Merry Christmas, Trowa.”

“Is it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered and then he kissed me.  It was brief, hot, and only momentarily deep.  Just a taste.

When he pulled away, I smiled wryly.  “That Mr. Pibb stuff is siff,” I told him.

He chuckled.  “And here I thought it’d taste decent coming from me.”

I had no doubt it was an improvement, but it still tasted like kak.  “Try that again after you gargle and brush,” I murmured, speaking against the corner of his warm, smiling mouth.

“Roger that, Major Trowa.”

When the fire burned down, I collected all the empty wrappers and tucked them in a rubbish bag for disposal in the morning.  The skewers, with their charred and sticky barbs, we left beside the hearth.  Duo stood and held out a hand which I took.  He pulled me upright.

“Any objections if I jump into my PJs and meet you in your room?” he whispered.

I shook my head.  “None.”

Ten minutes later, Duo crawled beneath the covers beside me and gave me a proper goodnight Christmas kiss.  I groaned as his body heat seeped into me.  I tried to ignore how very much I liked the feel of his weight pressing against my side and chest as he braced himself above me.  My hands found their way under his shirt without permission from either of us.

He made an appreciative noise deep in his throat and it was all I could do to keep from rubbing my hips against his thigh.  I considered rolling him onto his back like I’d done that first night in Vientiane and kissing him, rocking and rubbing against him until he came, until I came, until I’d had enough of him.

I kept my hands motionless on the hot skin of his waist and focused on kissing him back.

He was hard when he finally pulled away.  As was I.  His smile was apologetic and I raised a hand to his lips to keep him from articulating the regret I could see in his eyes.  I knew this was not the time or the place.  Neither of us were ready for more.  In his case, he was still fighting against the reality of his father’s death.  As for me, I needed to be certain I wasn’t putting his health at risk; in my line of work, there was plenty of blood and sweat.  I was virtually positive that I was fine, but I wasn’t willing to bet Duo’s life on it.

Still, it felt like dying an agonizing death a dozen times over when he moved away.  As he snuggled against my side, I consoled myself with the very likely possibility that things wouldn’t be this way for long between us.  He chose me with every look, every touch, every kiss, every step in my direction.  I just had to be patient.  And follow Howard’s advice about getting tested.

The old man saw us off the next morning, pulling Duo into a bear hug that I could almost feel just from watching it.  He spoke in Duo’s ear and Duo was blushing by the time he was released.

“Yeah, I know” was all he said.

I nodded to Howard.  He nodded back.  Duo and I threw our suitcases in the boot and hit the road.  As Duo turned onto the highway bound for Heathrow, it hit me: in less than six hours, I’d be boarding a plane for New York; by this time tomorrow, I’d be walking across the threshold of Duo’s apartment in America.

I was going home.

With Duo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don’t have to point out the brief appearance of Shinigami at the beginning of this installment, do I? Oh, uh, whoops. I guess I just did.
> 
> I know you guys are probably feeling sorry for Trowa (because, whoa, Duo is a master at the art of giving mixed signals) and you’re wondering what the hell Duo is thinking AND you’re screaming at Trowa to just go for it and clue Duo in to all the relationship awesome they’re missing out on. Um, sorry. His father’s death is really messing with Duo’s head right now. More on this in upcoming installments: “Team Work” and “Prom Night”.
> 
> Also, due to his nomadic childhood, Trowa was never plugged into pop culture the way other kids are. I’m sure that lots of kids in Africa know (hella more than I do) about comic books (like Batman mentioned in this installment and Hawkeye from Ruins, Part 3). But Trowa’s just really disconnected from “normal” if you get what I mean. (And, BTW, yes, Hawkeye’s “real” character name is Barton – Clint Barton. No lie. This is something else that I put in Tomb Raiders and then thought to check later, at which time I was struck by the creepy-psychic-vibe-ness of it.)


	8. Team Work, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Duo POV
> 
> Theme music: "Love Alone" by Thriving Ivory

“Oh… my… _God!”_

“What!?” I demanded, slightly alarmed.  The last time I could remember Hilde using that tone I’d been very reluctantly sharing the boy’s sex ed pamphlet with her.  (Hey, she’d insisted!)  She’d gaped, grimaced, and then proclaimed her intent to marry a girl.  We’d been in fourth grade at the time.

So, the Tone was cause for concern.  My knee-jerk reaction was to check my fly, but no.  Everything was kosher.  Even if my pants were gaping open and the mouse was out of its house, my long, wool coat was covering it up.  In that moment of mindless panic, I’d totally forgotten that I was even wearing it.  Sheesh.

But if Hilde wasn’t horrified by my boybits dangling in the breeze, then that just begged the question—

“What the hell are you oh-my-Goding over, woman?”

_“Him.”_

She didn’t even have to point.  Her awe-filled gaze led mine straight across the parking lot, over the sea of snow-dusted cars, toward my ride.  Trowa was leaning back against the side of the car, his arms crossed over his chest, his nose and cheeks reddened by the chill.  Down jackets weren’t supposed to reveal trim, muscular figures – I was fairly certain of this – but if Hilde was seeing the same thing I was, then that brand new winter coat of his was a Joe-Schmo-camouflage _fail._

“Somebody’s got a new boyfriend,” she concluded.  “Yum.”

“Boyfriend, huh?” I tried to sound nonchalant.  Yeah, I considered myself Trowa’s boyfriend, but I was so not ready to be official about it.  As in, “Hey, I’m Duo.  Nice to meet ya.  And this is my boyfriend, Trowa.” 

I suspected my anxiety had its origins in a remark that Thomas had made while I’d watched Trowa get a haircut: “You’re choosing a difficult path, my lord.  People are not going to understand if you make your relationship with Trowa Barton known.  Think very carefully.  Do you want to be fighting their prejudices as well as the issues that come with running a corporation?”

He was right, dammit.  I wanted to be with Trowa, but the issue of us being together was more than just how it would _look_ to people.  There would be consequences involved.  Big ones.  Shit, I didn’t want to make our lives _more_ difficult.  I was up to my Adam’s apple in “difficult” already.

And then Hilde’s second remark filtered through.  _“Yum!?”_ I coughed.  “Oi!  What would Dorothy say if she caught you ogling some guy?”  Thank God she had a Thespian Club meeting today after school, otherwise she would have been standing here with us and she was even scarier than Hilde.

Hilde rolled her eyes.  “She’d ogle with me, of course!  I may not be all that interested in getting down to the gooey filling, but I can appreciate a delicious chocolate coating just as well as the next woman.”

Although she wasn’t as terrifying as Dorothy, Hilde still scared me sometimes.

“Oh, yeah,” she volunteered, still ogling _my_ boyfriend.  “Somebody’s expecting to get laid tonight.”

“Eh?” I squeaked.

“Duo, grow a brain.  Only a guy who expects to be well compensated for it would be a gentleman in _this_ weather.”

“Uh… really?”

She gave me a disbelieving look.  “Tell me you’d drape yourself all over an ice-encrusted vehicle like that in the dead of winter out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I might,” I contrarily argued.

“You’re abnormal.  Hey, wait a minute!” she gasped, her eyes widening with sudden enlightenment.  “Isn’t that _your_ car?”

I fought the answering smirk.  “So it is.”

She turned to me and, ignoring the waves of students streaming out of the building behind us, demanded imperiously, “Explain.”

At last, I let the smirk out to play.  “You work it out if you’re so smart,” I dared her with every last juvenile bone in my body.  “Since he’s not _invisible_ to you now.”

I saw it in her expression when it clicked.  “Oh… my… _God!_   _That’s_ Trowa?”

I winked.  “See ya tomorrow, Hils.”

“What!?  You’re not going to introduce me?”

“It’s freakin’ freezing out here!  You think I’m gonna keep him waiting just for _you?”_

Chuckling gleefully, I dashed off, leaving her standing on the school steps gaping and gawking.  Oh, vengeance was sweet.

“Former girlfriend?” Trowa asked by way of greeting.

I rolled my eyes.  “Hilde,” I summarized.  “If you’re not in the process of freezing your balls off, I’ll introduce you.”

For a moment, he looked like he was seriously considering social pleasantries over a man’s prerogative.  “Fuck it,” he growled and held out his hand for the car keys.

Given that he was standing (rather proprietorially) next to the driver’s side door, I guessed, “I’m thinkin’ this means you passed.”

“With flying colors.”

I dug the keys out of my pocket and tossed them to him before I jogged around to take the shotgun seat.  “Not hard to do given the drivers in this city.”

“Yo!” he objected.

I smirked again.  I was getting a lotta use outta my signature smirk this afternoon.  He unlocked the doors and I plopped into the passenger’s seat, waiting until he’d turned over the engine and the heater was warming up before demanding, “So, fork it over.  Let’s see it.  Gimme gimme gimme…!”

Sighing and shaking his head at my impersonation of a toddler with grabby hands syndrome, he shifted his hips up off the seat in a move that captured my complete attention.  Retrieving his wallet from the back pocket of his new, winter-weight jeans, he deftly plucked the laminated plastic card out of its slot and held it out to me.

I snatched the driver’s license with a flourish and peered closely at the photo.  “Dammit.  You’re photogenic even at the DMV.  I may have to hate you on principle.”

“You _may_ have to?” he queried as I handed the license back to him.  He wiggled in the seat as he put his wallet away.

“Yeah.  There’s a seventy percent chance of meaningless hate according to the latest forecast.”

I couldn’t see his smile through the fall of his bangs, but I sensed it was there.  “I can do a lot with thirty percent.”

“Just so long as you don’t do it in a parking lot, you’re in with a chance,” I replied, glancing at one of the guys from the swim team as he strode past, performing a classic double-take at seeing me in the passenger’s seat of my own car.

“Copy that,” Trowa replied.

I laughed.  We buckled our seatbelts and Trowa drove us home.  Home.  Wow, it was hard to believe that Trowa had been living with me for something like two weeks already.  Although, we’d been so busy that I guess it was inevitable that time would fly.  I really, really had not been prepared for bringing him home with me.  I’d been intending to talk to my dad about it before I started cleaning out Solo’s old room and boxing all his stuff up, but I hadn’t gotten around to it before we’d left for Laos, so guess what was waiting for us when we arrived?  Yup.  Fun with cardboard boxes.

That first night, I’d felt like an absolute loser when I’d had to tell Trowa that his jetlagged ass could have the couch or my bed and I’d sleep wherever.

“Then you’ll sleep with me,” he’d said.  “Where’s your room?”

It’d been weird having someone in my bed with me.  I kept expecting my dad to knock on the door and find me flat on my back, being body-glomped by my softly snoring boyfriend.

And then there’d been a whole scow-load of other things to worry about.  Like when I was gonna have to give my notice at the Super Mart, and what was gonna happen with the company now that I was maybe-sorta-possibly in charge, and how soon Trowa’d be able to get his driver’s license, and then there was the issue of getting him warm clothes and enrolled in that GED prep school I’d looked into and—

“Duo, breathe,” he’d whispered at me that first night, rubbing his cheek against my shoulder.

“Sorry,” I’d answered and forced myself to come up with a step-by-step plan.  After that, I’d managed to fall asleep.

The next day, after he’d insisted on reconnoitering the entire freakin’ building from roof to basement, I’d dragged Trowa to the mall where he’d found a warm coat, some jeans and sweaters and whatever else.  I’d used my credit card.  If he wanted to pay me back later, he would.  I didn’t really care one way or the other.  It was a drop in my debt ocean until I had access to more funds.

After we’d loaded the shopping bags into the car, Trowa’d hesitated to close the trunk, staring down at his new stuff like he was watching evolution in action.

“What is it?” I’d asked, wondering at that look on his face.

Eyes downcast, he’d mumbled, “All this won’t fit in my rucksack.”

I’d grinned.  “It’s not supposed to.”

He’d looked up, a hesitant smile playing on his lips.

“Allow me the honor of introducing you the most exciting invention since clothes,” I’d sales-pitched.  “It’s called ‘the dresser’.”

“Goof,” he’d accused and slammed the trunk shut before getting in the car.

We’d swung by the Super Mart on the way home so I could pick up my schedule and beg some boxes.  Trowa and I had crashed the moment we’d dumped the loot from our expedition onto the living room floor.  The next day, we’d dealt with cleaning out Solo’s room.

“I can do this by myself,” I’d offered when Trowa had followed me down the hall after our morning consumption of rancidly dirty coffee.

“Would you rather be alone?”

“Well, no, I’d rather be with you, but what kind of loser makes his boyfriend clean out his own room before he can move into it?”

Trowa’d put a hand on my arm and stopped me.  Turning me around, he’d gathered me close in an affectionate hug.  For a guy who’d been raised by a bunch of mercs, he was well-versed in the art of being cuddly.  Or maybe he was an expert _because_ he’d shared close quarters with a dozen guys all his life.  Or, hell, maybe he was finally letting his inner child live out a dream.

“I’m not an expert on boyfriends,” he’d confided.  “But I’ve no complaints with this one.”

“That’s good,” I’d mumbled into the weave of Trowa’s grey turtleneck.  “Because this one could do with a boost of confidence.  He doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

He’d chuckled.  “I could help him with that.”  To illustrate, he’d smoothed one palm down the center of my back and stopped right on my tailbone.  “All he has to do is ask,” he’d rumbled sexily in my ear.

I’d cleared my throat.  “They say it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I’d remarked randomly.

“So it is,” he’d agreed after a long moment.

When I’d moved away, he’d dropped his arms.  I still hated myself for feeling relieved.  And I still hated myself for putting him off, day after day, night after night.  He was waiting for me to bring up the subject of blood tests.  He was waiting for me to tell him I wanted him.  I just… I just couldn’t say the words.

And I had no idea why.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Trowa asked at a red light.

I startled.  “Huh?  Oh, I was just thinkin’ about all that crap we cleared outta Solo’s old room.”  It was Trowa’s room now but he had yet to actually sleep in the bed.  Somehow, he ended up snuggling up with me every damn night and I ended up waking up with a raging hard-on every damn morning.  At least there was the conspicuous wet patch of drool on the shoulder of Trowa’s long-sleeved T-shirt to humiliate me into _not_ starting something.

“He was interested in the Orient,” Trowa observed.

No doubt about it.  Most of the stuff we’d boxed up had been figures, models, and books on epic Asian stuff.  There was one thing I didn’t get, though, and that was the 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of some forest in Japan.  Solo hated puzzles.  And he’d always been more interested in the ancient buildings than in their surroundings.  But whatever.  It was probably just a leftover Christmas present that he’d ignored.  That didn’t explain why it’d been sitting in the middle of his bed, though.

With a sigh, I made an effort to _not_ think about my brother.  It wasn’t every day that a guy passed his driver’s test.

“Hey, let’s stop by the Super Mart and get something for dinner.”

Trowa tilted his head at a quizzical angle that made me want to nuzzle his throat.  “No tins of pasta tonight?”

I grinned.  “Hell, no!  An’ no microwave dinners, either.  Only the best for you, baby.”

His curiosity was palpable.  “Hm?”

“We’re goin’ for frozen pizza!” I enthused, doing my slick punk rocker impersonation.  Trowa barked out a laugh.  I loved that I could make him laugh, but I also loved that I could coax a chuckle from him, too.  Those chuckles of his were damn nice.

When he parked, I put a hand on his arm.  “Keep the engine hot.  I’ll be comin’ in fast with the goods.”

That won me one of those aforementioned chuckles.

Even though I’d joked about it, I really did wanna give him the best.  I chose two of those fancy, ten-dollar pizzas that you bake in the oven, two pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, a can of plain Pringles (because I knew he’d gag on all the other flavors), a bag of _real_ sourdough pretzels, a container of cream cheese (for the pretzels), and a two-liter bottle of dry ginger ale (which was the only soft drink I’d gotten him to admit to liking).  Oh, yeah.  We were gonna celebrate in _style._

I swiped my credit card at the checkout and dumped the bag in the backseat.  “Hit the gas, man,” I ordered as I buckled myself in.  “Ice cream’s melting!”

“Code red,” he remarked drolly, but he didn’t waste any time pulling out of the parking lot and navigating us back the apartment.  I raced him to the elevator and down the hall to the front door.

“Hey,” he protested as we crossed the threshold.  I was intent on getting the loot safely stowed in their respective refrigeration units so I’d already taken two steps in the direction of the kitchen.

“What?” I bitched playfully, “You’re gonna make me take my shoes off indoors, honey?”

He hooked a finger in the belt loop on my coat, halting my progress.  “Where’s my kiss?” he murmured.

“Oh,” I replied.  We’d made a habit of enjoying one of those as soon as we got home and the front door had closed behind us.  “I’m not letting you back me up against the wall so you can ravish me this time,” I informed him, arms tight around the paper sack I was carrying.

“Fine,” he replied.  “We’ll put that off ‘til later.”  And then his mouth was on mine and his tongue was dipping past my slack lips.  Oh, damn.  Damn damn damn but he turned me into mindless goo every time he went in for kiss.  Every damn time.  Without fail.  I felt his hand snake inside my collar at the back of my neck and I groaned.  It was totally unfair that he could wipe my mind like a reformatted hard drive in two seconds or less.

He took his time charting and caressing the inside of my mouth, drawing my tongue out with his, pushing and pulling, giving and taking.  My God but it was almost enough to get me to say to hell with the ice cream.  My inarticulate groan was still vibrating in the back of my throat when he pulled back, looking completely freakin’ pleased with himself.

Damn but he was hot when he smirked.

“I think we just managed to melt the ice cream,” I told him.

“So we’re having soup?”

“Hah.  Yeah.  Cold soup.  I told ya dinner would be fancy, didn’t I?”

I had to take a moment to summon up the effort needed to get my legs to move correctly, but I made it into the kitchen unimpeded this time.  The ice cream was definitely soft, but not past the point of no return.

The point of no return.  What an apt description for the line in the sand that I was pretending I wasn’t standing on.

I nearly jumped a foot in the air when I felt Trowa’s hands on my hips and his breath in my ear.  I blinked, coming back to the present.  I was standing with the refrigerator door open, staring at the mostly-bare shelves for no reason at all.

“You’re distracted this afternoon.  Bad day?”

“Eh?  Nah,” I said, closing the fridge.  “A whole lotta nuthin’.  Everyone’s still a zombie from winter breaks.  First days back at school are always like that.”

Before I could turn around or pull away, he prompted with obvious hesitance, “That’s not what I meant.  Did anyone mention your father?”

“Oh.  That.  Yeah.  They knew.  Marshall put an announcement in the paper here the day after Christmas.”  School had been like attending that Goddamn funeral all over again what with all the condolences I’d had to field.  Damn it, I shoulda tried out for the baseball team.

“Duo?”

“Yeah?”

“What else?”

It amazed me that he was so persistent at digging into my thoughts.  My dad had often had to ferret for the truth.  It was weird being subjected to the same procedure from someone else.  But he was right; there was something else.

Sighing, I reached out and poked one of the refrigerator magnets into alignment with its neighbor.  “Are you sure about doing security work?  You don’t have to.  You have other options.”  That was the whole point of him coming to live with me.  I wanted him to have options, _infinite_ freakin’ options.  I hadn’t brought him to the States so he could endure a rerun of all the crap he’d already lived through once.

He leaned his chin on my shoulder and wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing his interlaced fingers against the top button of my school trousers beneath my coat.  “I’m doing what I know,” he replied.  “Noventa said I could change my mind later.”

“And you will say something,” I checked, “if you change your mind.”  It wasn’t really a question, but it still demanded a response.

“Of course.  You’ll be the first to know.”

“OK.”  I prodded another magnet.  “I guess it’s kinda moot until you get done with school anyway.”

“Yah.”

I turned toward him.  He’d taken his coat off and I grinned at today’s sweatshirt.  It was the “U of D” one.

“You do know this stands for ‘University of Denver’, right?” I’d checked that day at the mall.

He’d glanced down at the sweatshirt he’d just tossed over his own arm and grinned softly.  “The ‘D’ is open to interpretation.”  The hot look he’d given me had clued me in to what he thought it stood for.  Well, I guess everyone blushes in the men’s department at some point in their lives, so I hadn’t let the embarrassment get to me.  Too much.

But the writing on his sweatshirt had just reminded me: “Your classes start the day after tomorrow.”

“Yah.”

He’d taken the placement exam last week so we both knew how much material he was gonna have to cover if he wanted to get his GED this summer.  And it was a _lot_ of material.  He knew basic math and basic science and he’d read a few classics, which was all they taught over the radio in Africa.  There were also my contributions which had been mainly world history and English literature, but Trowa’d never been to a brick-and-mortar school before.  “Uh… how do you want to work the study thing?”

“What do mean?”

I shifted guiltily.  “I mean, do you want me to help you if you have questions or do you want to see about getting a tutor?”

“The one you mentioned before?  The medical student?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “She lives downstairs.  Real nice.”

He tilted his head to the side.  “You think I should study with her and not you?”

“Well… I’d feel weird about being your part-time tutor, Tro.  It’s not, y’know, balanced.”  I’d done the tutoring thing before.  Once.  And I’d lost a friend for my trouble.  I didn’t want to take that risk again.  There was nothing I could do that would instantly put Trowa and me on a level playing field when it came to academics – I’d been given advantages that he’d been denied his whole life – but just because I _could_ didn’t mean that I wanted to set myself up as his teacher.  I was his _boyfriend._   Well, I was trying to be.

“Ah,” he agreed, nodding.  “Right.”

“Yeah.”  I was just relieved that he’d gotten what I’d been trying to say.

“And you’re going to be busy with the company.”

I made a face.  Eugh.  The company.  “Yeah.  Weekly video conferences.  Whoo-hoo.”  And then, on top of that, my dad’s secretary was gonna be sending over all the files and documents I’d have to read in order to know what the hell we were discussing in the video conferences.  Thank God it was the second half of my senior year; I could afford to slack off at school since my winter and spring semester grades wouldn’t be factored into my college applications.  But cutting back on homework wasn’t gonna be enough: just as soon as I had a steady income, I was gonna have to quit my job, too.  Marshall had given me a ballpark figure for when that’d be happening.  In the meantime, thank God for credit cards.  My savings wasn’t gonna be able to cover all the airline tickets and incidentals, but it’d stave off the credit wolves for a few months.

“What are you worrying about now?” Trowa demanded softly, looking a little exasperated with me.

“Nothing!”  I was being a dick.  “Are you gonna tell me about the awesome parallel parking job you did today or do I have the guess?”

I dragged Trowa over to the sofa in the living room and made him give me a blow-by-blow account of his driving test, complete with gestures.  It was great.  And I no longer felt like an utterly worthless jerk for driving him over to the DMV office this morning on my way to school and just leaving him there to face the glory of American government bureaucracy all on his own.  I still thought I should have skipped school no matter how many times Trowa had looked on the verge of threatening to kick my ass.

“I’ll call you if something happens,” he’d promised after my sixth attempt to persuade him to let me stay and lurk and do the scary boyfriend thing if necessary.  “My test starts at eleven.  Until then, I have a book to read—”  I’d given him my copy of _The Indian in the Cupboard_ just for the “cupboard” value.  “—and when I’m done, I’ll get some graze and take the train back.”

I’d opened my mouth again.

He’d anticipated me.  “Yah, I have my passport and money.”  He’d given me a look.  “And if you open your mouth one more time, I’m kissing you right here on the street.”

I’d bitten my lip and mumbled, “Sorry.”

His slow, sweet smile had made me tingle.  “I’ll see you later.”  And then he’d gotten out of the car and walked up to the front doors of the building.  This time, unlike at Bangkok airport, he hadn’t looked back.  It’d made driving off easier, but not by much.

“Whatever possessed you to stake out my car this afternoon, dude?” I asked when he got done with the whole tale and I’d applauded until he’d sketched out a mockery of a bow.

He leaned back against the sofa, kicking his legs out in a sexy sprawl.  “I have no fokken idea.  Whatever it was, it must have frozen and fallen off.  I certainly won’t be doing that a second time.”  He rolled his head toward me and smirked.

I smirked back.  “I hope you’re not gonna end up needing that whatever-it-was that froze and fell off.”

He tucked his chin down and gave me a long, inviting look.  “I haven’t taken an inventory yet.”

That sounded like an invitation.  Hell, he _looked_ like an invitation.  My earlier hesitance evaporated.  An instant later, I was straddling his hips, my hands pinning his shoulders to the cushions.  I leaned down and he tilted his chin up so eagerly I felt a zing zip-and-zag down my spine.  I kissed him.  I kissed him like I’d been wanting to kiss him every day for those three damn years we’d been apart.  Here he was, at long last, draped over my sofa and there was nothing between us but a niggling doubt that I couldn’t pin down.  Well, I’d worry about wrangling it later.  Now was for the amazing fact that he was _here_ and wanted _me_.

I tasted every contour and texture of his mouth I could reach with my tongue until his fingers were digging into my thigh muscles through my school uniform trousers and he was making these tiny, needy little sounds that were almost grunts but more like whispered yeses.

When my mouth was numb to the taste of him, I leaned back.  His lips were wet with my spit.  I reached out to wipe his mouth for him, but he caught my thumb between his lips.  I held my breath as he licked the pad and then I groaned when he began a hard suction.  “Ooooh, damn,” I approved.  “I think this still works.”

“Hmm,” he rumbled, watching me with green eyes gone forest-dark with lust.

Pulling my thumb from his mouth, I grasped his wrists and lifted his hands to my shoulders.  “How about these?” I checked.  “Are you getting any sensory input?”

I guided his hands down over my chest, marveling at my own daring.  Hell, what did I know about fooling around?  Only what I’d seen in movies and read in the occasional Biohazard fanfic (which, by the way, I was sure were not representative of _actual_ or even _possible_ sexual encounters) but whatever.  It was a place to start.

Instead of letting his flattened palms finish their journey at my crotch, I pushed his hands around to my back and rolled my hips against him.  I grinned when he actually cupped my ass and my eyes widened when he squeezed.

“Ungh!” I squeaked, panting.  “Those seem to be working.”

His fingertips drew lazy patterns on the fabric over my rear.  “Uh-hm,” he agreed, wetting his lips.

At some point, he’d slouched further down on the sofa and I could see a sexy band of taut skin above the waist of his jeans.  I burrowed my hands underneath his bunched up sweatshirt and ran my palms up the hot, muscular territory of his chest until I brushed his nipples.

The effect was electric.  He threw his head back, eyes closed and breath hissing out through his teeth as his hips rolled up and he pulled mine down in a hot collision that made me moan.

“I’m pretty sure you’re in working order,” I panted.  “Whatever froze and fell off earlier couldn’t have been a necessary component for basic function.”

“Duo—” he gasped out softly.  “How can you—bloody talk so much?”

“One of my many talents,” I responded.

He rocked against me a second time and I shivered, sensing the start of a rhythm.  “Uhhh…” I commented, remembering that night in Vientiane with him leaning over me, rubbing against me, bringing me off with his callused hand.  My fingers twitched, pinching his hardened nipples as I moved against the bulge in his jeans.  He couldn’t possibly be comfortable – hell, my trousers were a helluvalot less confining and _I_ was uncomfortable – but he didn’t take his hands off my ass in order to rectify the problem.  Nor did he even ask me to help him out.  He just leaned back against the sofa, his eyes mostly closed but occasionally glittering at me in between soft scrapes from my blunt nails.  I watched him back as he wetted his lips, mouthed my name, and guided my crotch down against his time and time again.

“Trowa, baby,” I warned him as my skin started to tingle all over.  “We’re gonna come in our pants if you keep this up.”

“You started it.”

“You practically invited me to.”

“Yah,” he admitted.  “I did.”  The last word bled into a groan.

“You close?” I checked.

He nodded once.  Beneath my hands, his chest was rising and falling with heaving pants.  When I pulled my hands out from under his sweatshirt, he protested softly but then groaned when I popped the button free on his jeans and carefully slid the zipper down.  I tugged at the fabric and his length bulged out, pulling his underwear taut.  I ran my fingers over him, tracing and teasing before heading for the elastic waistband.  I didn’t actually make it that far.

He came with a bitten-off shout, pulsing against my hands and dampening the fabric of his shorts.

“Damn,” I panted as my own tingles coalesced – one by one – in my belly.  “You are so hot.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me.  I tracked the movement of his tongue as he wetted his lips again.

Ooooh, Christ he was sexy.  “I could almost come just from this,” I confessed.  I was close, but it was gonna take a little more TLC to get the job done.

“Almost?” he rasped.

I nodded and his hands abandoned their post to seek out the fastenings on my trousers.  I looked down and watched as his nimble fingers worked at freeing me: button, zipper, boxer flap…

“Ah…” I sighed as he drew my length out from the confining fabric.  The air hit my skin and I shivered with relief and reaction and arousal.  I threw my head back and nearly squealed when Trowa’s fingers traced the vein along the underside.  He rubbed that spot just under and behind the head until I was jerking against him in an effort to feel more, more, more—!

“Befokken lekker,” he growled in approval.

I would have gotten around to asking him for a translation if he hadn’t fisted his hand around me right then and pulled.  “Jesus fuck!” I hissed, groaning when he massaged my own wetness into the head, keeping the rhythm slow and his fist tight.  His other hand found its way beneath my dress shirt and undershirt and his fingertips danced up my ribcage.

“Holy fucking Trowa baby,” I babbled when he found a nipple.  I slumped over him, bracing myself up on my hands as I thrust into his grip.  He toyed with my chest, watching me with eyes glittering and lips wet.  “So hot,” I accused through gritted teeth.  “Can’t stand it.”  My fingers curled into the cushions.  I was so close I could _taste_ it.  “Gonna come,” I warned him.

“Good.”

I shook my head.  “All over your clothes…!”

His eyes narrowed and sparkled with approval.  He hissed softly, “Yes…”

And then it was happening and I was dying or falling or being obliterated.  The rush and the heat and the _now-now-now!_ was just as intense as it had been in Vientiane.  I locked my elbows to keep from falling on him and just focused on breathing.  Beneath me, he was wiggling and shifting around.  It wasn’t until I felt something firm-to-the-point-of-steely and slightly damp brush against my crotch that I realized he was hard again.  Hard and bare.

I opened my eyes and looked right into his.

“All right?” he checked, his hands pushing at my trousers and shorts, his palms sliding over my hips, skin on skin.

I glanced down and, whoa damn.  It was a miracle my school uniform was as splatter-free as it was.  I don’t think I’d ever come that much in my entire life.  And then there was the mess smeared across Trowa’s thighs from his first round.  And then there was _Trowa._   This was the first time I’d really _looked_ at him and… and…  I swallowed thickly.

“Duo?”

“Huh?”

His hands caressed their way deeper into my shorts.  He asked softly, “Can I come again with you?”

The sound of his voice… the question itself… the sight of him flushed with desire and the feel of him rubbing against me…  I shuddered and felt a twitch from my supposedly exhausted length.  “God, yes.”

He leaned up to kiss me and I dared to take one hand off of the back of the couch and work my way beneath his sweatshirt again.  I thought about asking him if I could take it off, but the feel of his hardness nudging against me and the slickness of his skin when I rubbed against him drove every thought from my mind.  I was distantly aware of grabbing, scratching, plucking, and groping my way across his chest and I could feel his fingers digging into my ass.  He kissed me softly with just brief flicks of his tongue, teasing me with the same rhythm as our hips.  He nuzzled against my neck, kissing, sucking, nipping.  He was gonna leave marks, I was sure, and I suspected I’d feel embarrassed about it later, but I couldn’t figure out why.

He pushed against my shirt collar and necktie, trying to burrow deeper.  His breath was so hot and his scent was overwhelming and I just wanted to fall into him forever.  The second wave, when it came, was smaller, slower, almost soothing.  I shuddered and groaned as I pulsed against him, my hips twitching, mindlessly chasing the euphoria that was even now beginning to fade.

Trowa’s mouth sealed over my neck and he sucked hard on my skin.  An instant later, I felt him let go, felt the dampness of his second release surging up my belly and then dripping down.

I wondered what he tasted like.

I had to close my eyes.  The eyes were the window to the soul, after all, and I wasn’t so sure I was ready for him to see that thought reflected there.  His hands roved up and down my back, guiding me back to the here, the now, and the mess we’d just made.

I guess Hilde had been right about someone getting laid tonight.  Sort of.

“Um…”  I really, honestly didn’t know what to say.

Trowa’s arms banded around me and I gave up on words.  He didn’t seem to need them and I couldn’t string two together.  I relaxed against him, my hands seeking out his arms just for something to hang onto.

“Dude,” I finally managed, “I’m totally wearing my school uniform.”

“I noticed.”

“There anything you wanna tell me?” I checked, biting back a giggle.  “I promise not to judge you if you’ve got a thing for guys in uniform.  Or school uniforms.”

He barked out a laugh.  “I don’t think it’s the uniform, but I’ll keep you posted.”

“You damn well better,” I bantered back, grinning.

While Trowa took a shower, I threw my uniform in the washing machine and then got around to fixing dinner.  Our pizzas were on the coffee table, steaming and cheesy, by the time Trowa emerged with damp hair.

I tossed him the remote as I got the ginger ale and a pair of tumblers.  Trowa popped open the can of Pringles; I tore open the bag of pretzels and opened the cream cheese.  Somehow, we ended up watching professional wrestling, bumping shoulders as we mocked the incredibly fake and sorry excuse for entertainment.

“They can’t expect us to take this seriously,” Trowa remarked in a tone that had been squashed flat by disbelief.

I snorted.  “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a parody.”

“A bad one.”

“Hah!  Maybe we’re just not drunk enough to appreciate it.”

I was sure wishing for a stiff drink the following day.  After Trowa dropped me off at school, Hilde pounced and, naturally, her gaze zoomed right to the muffler I’d strategically placed around my neck to hide the hickeys.

“What’s with the muffler, Duo?” she teased as I hung my coat up in my locker and collected my books.

“Have you looked outside?” I retorted, ignoring Dorothy’s knowing smirk.  “It’s freakin’ winter.”

“Nice and toasty in here,” she argued.

“I’m anemic.”

“Of course you are,” Dorothy chimed in with a sly smile, “what with all the blood rushing _south.”_

I felt my face flame.  Damn it.  Why didn’t I have any straight, clueless guys for friends?

“So, how’s Trowa?” Hilde badgered.

Rallying my fighting spirit, I gave her wide, leer of a smile.  “He’s awesome.  Thanks for asking.”  And then I got my ass the hell outta there.

Everyone thought I was coming down with something given my new accessory and the way I’d blush for no apparent reason.  They couldn’t have known I was remembering last night’s sofa escapade so, for all intents and purposes, it looked like I was about to spontaneously combust from bubonic plague or something.  Yes, my muffler was my new best friend.  I considered naming it.  Maybe “Hubert” or “Fritz.”

Unfortunately, there was nothing it could do for me when swim practice rolled around.

“You seeing someone, Dom?”

I rolled my eyes and just generally did my best not to hunch up my shoulders to hide the marks.  “Butt the hell out, Rod,” I replied jovially.

“Do I know her?”

It was funny how he assumed it was a girl given the rumors that had been going around about me for years.  “I doubt it.”

Before he could move on to the next out of twenty freakin’ questions, I finished stuffing my braid up inside my swim cap and left the changing room.  Rod Walker was a decent guy, but there was no way I was gonna talk to him about _that._

“Maxwell!”

At the edge of the pool, I turned.  “Yeah, Coach?”

Coach Otto glanced at my neck.  I braced myself for, I dunno, a disapproving look or… something, but I couldn’t detect so much as a blip in his expression.

“I’m going to need that doctor’s report if you’re serious about the state finals in February.”

“Oh… right.”  I’d qualified back at the end of November.  My dad had been pretty thrilled about it.  I clenched my jaw and nodded.  “I’ll get a physical and have the results sent over.”

He nodded.  “Next Friday’s the deadline.”

As if I didn’t have enough to do already.  “Got it.”

He left me to my warm-up routine.  Normally, I loved swimming.  Today, I just couldn’t get into it.  I had too much to worry about.  Too much to do.  I felt like I was wasting my time when I ought to be studying up for the company video conference this weekend and talking to Marshall about his progress on my dad’s will.  Hell, I didn’t even know if my dad had appointed someone else president of the company!

I could dream.

“So, I guess you’re in charge now,” Alex Ruthford said as I pulled on my coat at the end of practice.

“Huh?”

Alex and I had been friends once upon a time in elementary school.  Then we’d gotten split up into separate homerooms in junior high and he’d started hanging out with Josh Mueller.  The guy’d always creeped me out, so Alex and I had kinda lost touch.  Having him as a teammate had seemed like a serendipitous bonus back in sophomore year when I’d signed up, but he’d changed from the kid I remembered.  Maybe it was Mueller’s influence.

“The company,” he elaborated, almost glaring at me.  “You’re in charge now, right?”

“I guess.”

“So the headquarters are staying here in New York?”

I shrugged.  I really had no idea what the hell was gonna happen.  I knew that his dad was one of the top guys at the New York office but I’d never met him.

Alex nodded once, as if I’d just confirmed his suspicions about something, and then he turned away.  I booked it the hell out of there.

Trowa was waiting in the car with the engine running.  He had a book propped open on the steering wheel and his index finger was already buried under the page he was reading in preparation of turning it.  As I got closer, I noticed he was almost finished with _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe._  Another recommendation of mine.  Also for the “cupboard” value.

I knocked on the hood of the car as I jogged around.  He didn’t jerk his head up in surprise, but his mouth curved into a grin.  He hit the door locks for me without looking up from the page.

“How was practice?” he asked, closing the book and tucking it into the side pocket on the door before reaching up to turn off the interior dome light.

I was about to shrug and blow the question off, but then I remembered my souvenir from last night.  I glared at him.  “Revealing.”

I’d never seen Trowa bite his lip in an attempt to camouflage a smile before.  Interesting.  “Oh?”

“Dude.  Your innocent and nonchalant routine needs serious work.  I can see your chest puffing up from way over here.”

“You’re not that far away.”

“Exactly.”

He snorted softly and then glanced my way shyly, his gaze touching briefly on my neckwear.  “The marks weren’t that bad,” he mumbled, attempting to downplay the situation.

“Oh, really?”  I reached up and flicked the dome light back on before pulling my muffler away from my throat and leaning over to get a look at the bruises in the rear view mirror.  They’d darkened since this morning.  “I’m going to kill you,” I informed him.  “If you start running now, you might make it to the port authority before I track your ass down and exact revenge.”

“I’m open to revenge,” he murmured directly into my ear.

I twitched over onto my side of the car and rewrapped the muffler around my neck.  I glared at him again.  “Yeah, you’d like that a little too much, I’m thinkin’.”

“You think too much,” he argued back and finally put the car in gear.  When he turned the dome light off for a second time, I welcomed the darkness.

I stared out the window, silently contemplating my options for revenge.  At the stoplight just a block from our building, Trowa cleared his throat and prompted, “Duo?”

“Hm?”

“It won’t happen again.”

I blinked.  Did he really think I was _angry_ about it?  I wasn’t.  Not really.  I was… irked, but I had to admit that the hickeys would undoubtedly up my street cred at school _if_ I played my cards right.  Hell, I was pretty sure that it was gonna be around school by lunch tomorrow.  If I kept acting embarrassed about it, I’d never live it down.  So, I was gonna have to beat my chest like some kind of primeval caveman and smirk my ass off.  I could do that.

I let out a sigh.  “I’m not mad, Tro.”

He glanced at me questioningly.

I glanced at him, a wry grin in play.

He released a breath and stopped strangling the steering wheel.  His shoulders relaxed.  He ran a hand through his bangs, pulling them back from his face completely before letting them feather back down into place.  “Bloody hell, you gave me a skrik,” he muttered.

There was that _skrik_ word again.  I was thinkin’ I knew what it meant, though.  I smirked.

The light changed and he drove on, turning off of the street and into the underground parking garage.  When we got to the elevator, I hit the button for the floor beneath ours before he could do the honors.

He looked at me, brows expressively arched in question.  I just grinned in reply and rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet.  “How was your day?” I finally asked.

“Productive,” he summarized.

I reached out and flicked the edge of the book binding poking out of his jacket pocket.  “Hm, yeah.  Looks that way.”

He gave me an unreadable look.

My grin widened.  “How often did you reread the same page?”

He turned toward me and took a predatory step in my direction.  Rather than back away from him, I leaned forward and raised my chin, cocking my brows in challenge.

The elevator began to slow.  Trowa paused just out of range and took a quick, cleansing breath.  “Tell me one of us is getting ravished when we get upstairs.”

I chuckled darkly.  “Only if you’re good.”

The doors opened before he could respond one way or another.  I led him down the corridor to apartment 1402, which was directly beneath ours.  I knocked and waited.

When the door opened and the man on the other side smiled in welcome, I greeted, “Hey, Miles.  Long time no see!”

“Dominic!  Yes, it’s been ages.  How are you?”  We shook hands.  Miles was actually Rod’s elder brother.  I had to wonder about that family.  Miles Walker and Rod Walker.  Thank God their parents hadn’t had a third kid or the poor schmo probably would have been named “Kilometer” or “Cain” or something.

“Sorry to drop in like this, but I was wondering if Sally was around.”

“She just got back from her lecture.”  He gestured us across the threshold.  As he shut the door, I volunteered, “Miles, this is my friend Trowa Barton.  Trowa, Miles Walker.  His younger brother’s on the swim team.”

“Who’s here, Miles?” a woman’s voice called from the direction of the kitchen.

“Dominic from upstairs and a friend of his.”

I grinned and nodded hello to Sally when she came into the room.  She made a beeline right for me and gave me a hug.

I patted her awkwardly.  With her husband and my boyfriend looking on, I was feeling the pressure to not look too comfortable.  “Damn, woman.  I know you love your plants, but all I did was water ‘em the last time you guys went to Hawaii.”

“Duo, silly bean,” she scolded me, smiling.  Then she turned to Trowa and damned if her blue eyes didn’t connect the dots in two seconds flat.  I stuttered through the second round of introductions where I’d been Mr. Cool not three minutes earlier.

“It’s so nice to meet a friend of Duo’s,” she approved, shaking Trowa’s hand.  I was partly mollified by how unsettled Trowa seemed by her warm reception.  Not that he looked nervous, but I could tell that he’d withdrawn and was bracing himself.  This was his bodyguard face.  The one he used when he was in unfamiliar territory but was reasonably certain he wouldn’t actually have to pull a knife on anyone.

“What brings you by?” she asked.

“We were looking for you, of course,” I teased, drawing her attention away so Trowa could have a minute to collect himself and scope out the scene.

“Oh?”

Miles laughed.  “My wife is always in demand.”

She smacked him teasingly on the arm.

“Uh-oh,” I mused.  “That sounds ominous.”  And it sounded like it was gonna cost me an arm and a leg in tutor’s fees.

“What can I do for you, Duo?” she replied.

I took half a step closer to Trowa.  “Well, Trowa here has just immigrated to the States and he’d like to get his GED.  Of course, the minute I mentioned this awesome lady with mad tutoring skills in my building, he wanted to meet you.”

Sally smiled and, when she turned her attention back to Trowa, he looked ready to talk to her.  “Where are you from, Trowa?”

I stood by, just in case Trowa needed backup, but let him talk to his prospective tutor on his own.  He listed the classes he’d be taking and glanced at me when he got to the part about what he’d need to learn.

“Writing skills,” I contributed.  “Junior high and high school math.  Chemistry, physics, stuff like that.  We’ll email you a complete list later if that’s OK?”

It was.

“Will you be staying for dinner?” Miles asked us as Sally went to get her cell phone so she could enter our numbers and email addresses for future reference.

“Nah, thanks, though,” I declined.

“So, Trowa,” Miles continued, changing tack, “how did you and Dominic meet?”

Trowa’s lips twitched into an expression that was almost a smile.  “He dropped in on me in Egypt.”

I barked out a laugh.  “You mean my braid did,” I contributed.  Turning back to Miles, I added, “It was a couple of years ago.”

“There’s a story there,” Miles remarked.

“Stop putting the poor boys on the spot, Miles,” Sally said, returning to the living room.  We exchanged contact information and Trowa and Sally settled on a day and time for their first session.  Then it was up to me to get us outta there before we ended up being dinner guests after all.  Miles was a helluva cook, but there was no way I wanted to spend the evening fielding personal questions.  Besides, I’d have to take off my muffler and wouldn’t _that_ be a helluva conversation starter?

At the door, Sally drew me into another hug.  “We heard about your dad, Duo.  You’re welcome here anytime… to talk or commune with the ferns.  Whatever you need.”  Smiling, she nodded toward the forest that was her and Miles’ living room.

She didn’t say she was sorry for my loss.  She just hugged me and then let me leave.  I could have kissed her, but she just wasn’t my type.  Plus, it would’ve been too much trouble to explain it to Miles.  And then there was Trowa; he might have gotten jealous.  A jealous Trowa was hot as all _hello_ but it would not have been a very auspicious start for him and his new tutor.

“You’re smirking again,” Trowa observed as we took the elevator up to our floor.

“Yup.”  There was no point in denying it.  I met his gaze briefly as he looked up from the muffler still wrapped around my neck.  “Just, y’know, _thinking,”_ I purred, reminding him of the dog house he was still in.  I’d said I wasn’t angry, which was true, but I hadn’t said he was totally in the clear.  Actually, I didn’t _want_ him to be in the clear.  I glanced away, savoring the inevitable.

Trowa growled softly in frustration.  “You are killing me,” he muttered.

I took my time strolling down the hall to the door.  He hovered as I unlocked it and held it open.  The door shut behind us.  I tossed my keys on the hall table and my school bag onto the rug.  I unbuttoned my winter coat methodically.  Slowly, I pulled the muffler off my neck and stuffed it into my coat pocket.  He was so tense he seemed to be bracing for some kind of impact.

Well, I aim to please, after all.

I turned toward him and smiled.

“Duo?” he prompted.  I’d never heard him sound so uncertain.

My smile stretched wider.

He watched me, wary and tense, a wolf caught in a tiger’s territory.

I took a step in his direction.  He backed up.  I took another.  He retreated again.  I stalked him in silence until his heel bumped against the wall.  Perfect.  I carefully unzipped his coat and then reached for the front of his jeans.

“May I?” I sang, tapping out a snappy rhythm against the metal button.  Slowly and guardedly, he nodded.

I ran my fingers up and down the front of his jeans, following the line of flesh I was most interested in.  “Mmm,” I approved as he hardened under my touch.

His hands fisted at his sides, but he didn’t reach for me.  He leaned against the wall, tilting his head back as his hips hesitantly twitched in my direction.

I petted him through his jeans again and again until he shivered.  Taking half a step forward and sliding a knee between his, I leaned in and pressed my lips to his neck in a single chaste kiss.  He let out a breath and turned his head to the side, exposing his throat to me, to my lips and teeth and tongue.

I could mark him.  He’d let me.  My mouth watered as I relished the idea.  I opened my mouth and applied a brief, sucking kiss to his skin.  He groaned.  His hips thrust against my roving fingers.

“Duo…” he whispered.  The sound of my name poured out of him like a sonnet, a hymn, a _prayer._

My breath caught.  My lashes fluttered.

I sighed and leaned away, shaking my head to clear it.  When I spied the tender, damp skin of his neck, I knew I couldn’t mark him.  Not because I didn’t want to, but because he trusted me, because I wanted only the best for him, because he was my friend and I loved him and…  I couldn’t treat him that way.  I doubted he’d _meant_ to give me hickeys, not really.  They’d probably been the result of a stupid, heat-of-the-moment deal.  What I was about to do here and now wasn’t nearly as innocent as that.

“Trowa,” I called softly.

He opened his eyes and rolled his head toward me.

“I’m not angry,” I said, hopefully for the last time.

He watched me in silence.  Although he didn’t say anything, I could see how much he wanted to believe me.  It was there in his visible green eye.

I smiled softly.  “Are you gonna touch me or do I gotta beg?”

Before he could either move or reply, I kissed him.  Gently but thoroughly, softly but deeply.  He groaned and then his hands were on my hips and pressing upward under my coat and school blazer, pulling my dress shirt out from the waistband of my trousers, peeling my undershirt up my back.  He thrust his hips against mine as his rough hands surged up my bare skin beneath the layers of fabric.

I tore through the fastenings of his jeans and my trousers, shucked my coat and blazer off as I rode against him, rocking-rolling-thrusting, sharing breaths and swapping quiet moans.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” I confessed against his mouth.  “All damn day.”

“I didn’t mean to leave marks,” he replied before applying a quick, biting kiss to my lower lip.

“I know,” I replied.  “But you can if you need to.”  The sound of the words made waves of heat shiver inside me.  I licked my lips.

He pulled back and, still panting, paused.  “What?”

“I’m yours,” I reminded him.  “But if you need more than just the words…” 

Trowa and I were alike in a lot of ways, but we were undeniably different, too.  He tried so hard not to show it, but I knew he burned hot.  He kept so much buried and under pressure.  Deep down, his core was molten just like the Earth’s.  He tried so hard not to come on too strong, too overbearing, but I sensed the instinct.  Hell, he’d shown up at my school the day before just to make me walk over to him, choose him, show my allegiance in front of my friends and classmates.  He thought I didn’t know what was going through his head, but I could read him like the book that was still in his jacket pocket.

I pressed a kiss to his chin and then another to his jaw.  I slouched down so I could nuzzle against his bobbing Adam’s apple.  The motion rubbed my hip against his exposed length and my bare arousal against the bunched up fabric of his jeans at the top of his thighs.  “What do you need, baby?”

He rocked against me.  “I need you to get a blood test, Duo.”

I froze.

His fingers splayed and then re-curled into fists against my back.  He sighed out a word I was pretty sure was an Afrikaans curse.  I looked up at the sound of his head hitting the wall with a soft _thud!_   “Forget I said that,” he whispered to the ceiling.

“No, I’m not gonna forget,” I replied.  I braced my hands on the wall on either side of him.  I had every intention of getting that freakin’ blood test, of being with Trowa, of being his lover and not just his hand job helper.  There was still something that was bothering me, though.  Something that wasn’t right.  It was true that I was his, totally and irrevocably, but—  “But I need time.”

“I can be patient,” he offered, his hands relaxing and smoothing down my back, “if you promise to tell me ‘no’ when I go too far.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d expressed this concern.  “I’m not made of glass,” I replied drolly.

“No?” he moved differently now, molding and rolling me against him.  “Maybe you are – molten from the kiln.”

“Says the kiln himself,” I returned and picked up where we’d left off.

For the second night in a row, I ended up having to do laundry.  I didn’t regret it though.  Rubbing and rocking against Trowa in the hallway with the door and passersby only a short stretch away had been the hottest thing ever.  He’d pulled me squarely between his widely braced feet and propped one booted foot up on the nearby bench while his hands had guided me roughly against him.  And then he’d leaned his head back, offering his unblemished neck to me for a second time.

“Please, Duo,” he’d murmured and I’d relented, marking him with one long, hot, sucking kiss.

In the moments just before I fell asleep that night, I curled myself tighter around him, nuzzled his cloth-covered shoulder, and smirked.  Somebody was gonna be wearing a turtleneck tomorrow to his first day of classes.  Hah-hah!  Maybe it wasn’t retribution, but – as Trowa liked to say – turnabout was fair play.


	9. Team Work, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you tilt your head and squint, you can see some glimpses of Shinigami throughout “Team Work.” There is a possible appearance by our favorite God of Death at the very end of Part 1, and another here near-ish the beginning of Part 2, plus one more (that’s kinda hard to miss) in Part 3. We’ll see these summed up in Trowa’s POV (in “Prom Night”) so don’t worry if you miss them. They’re kind of read-it-again details – y’know, for if you read the story again after it’s all done.
> 
> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Theme music: "Run" by Thriving Ivory
> 
> Duo POV

“You’re going out dressed like that?” I asked when he strode into the kitchen the next morning, fresh from the shower.

“What?” he asked, looking down at himself, completely clueless.

I gaped.  He was standing there in a cable-knit sweater and a pair of jeans.  No turtleneck.  Hell, he wasn’t even wearing a collared shirt.  My gaze snagged on the hickey I’d given him in the hall the night before.  It was livid against his smooth skin.

I gestured to the O-shaped mark on his throat.  He caught my hand and pressed my fingertips to his mouth.  “Yah, I’m going out like this.”

“Why?” I sputtered.

“Because my incredible kerel, who is befokken lekker, pressed me senseless last night.”

“Befokken lekker?” I parroted.

He leaned in and rumbled with sensual emphasis, “Befokken…” and then he smoothed a hand down the line of my body from clavicle to hip and drew my earlobe into his mouth, releasing it after a brief, wet tug.  “Lekker.”  He rolled the word on his tongue like he was savoring it.

“OK,” I rasped.  “I think I got it.”

He backed me up against the counter and kissed me until I could feel a trail of saliva cooling at the corner of my mouth.  “Damn it,” I bitched when he deigned to let me talk.  “You’re gonna drop me off in front of everyone at school sporting freakin’ wood, aren’t you?”

His chuckle was dark and full of promise.  “Someday, if you’ll let me, yah, I might.”

I could actually see the appeal… a bit.  Turning it around, yeah, I was tempted to show everyone how freakin’ steaming hot Trowa was for me.  I wanted to rub it in their faces that I’d been given something they could never have.  Trowa wanted me and no one else.  Yeah, that was damn hot.  But did I actually want Hilde and Dorothy and the whole damn swim team and student body to see him with swollen lips and lust-darkened eyes?  No.  This Trowa was mine and I was damn well gonna keep him all to myself.

Still, I could not let myself forget that he was dangerous.  I mean, yeah, he’d been raised by mercenaries and he was a fighter.  He could probably snap my neck like it was a toothpick before I even felt a twinge of alarm.  I’d never worried – and I wasn’t worried now – about him doing anything to _hurt_ me.  But damn, he was intense.  This was the first time I’d ever been on the business end of Trowa.  It was an unnerving – but not exactly unpleasant – place to be.

As far as unpleasant places went, it was hard to beat the boardroom of Maxwell Limited, New York.  That weekend, after my morning shift at the Super Mart, Trowa picked me up and we drove downtown to company HQ where he had a meeting with Gerald Septum, the head of security, and I sat through a reading of my dad’s will.  He’d named me his sole heir and placed the entire Goddamn company – including the livelihoods of hundreds of people – in my hands.

Thank God for the brevity of the document and the well-timed bathroom break.  I was able to puke in peace and quiet.  And then I just sat on the commode in the stall and breathed into the wad of toilet paper I’d pressed over my mouth.  I reached for my cell phone, but there were no messages from Trowa; he was still enduring some orientation or other.

It was a sad, sad commentary on my state of mind that I preferred the men’s toilet to the plush conference room down the hall which had a fragrant coffee service and a box of complementary donuts.  The very thought of food had me whirling around and performing an encore to the porcelain god.

“Are you—?” Trowa broke off the question when I stumbled out of the trans-Atlantic video conference three hours later.  He shoved his textbook back into the bag I’d loaned him and surged to his feet.  I imagined I looked like hell.  He confirmed it.  “You are not all right.  Do you need to see a physician?”

I shook my head.  “Just… let’s go home.”

I couldn’t remember having a worse non-cataclysmic day.  Trowa didn’t prompt me in the car.  Hell, he didn’t even say anything as we kicked off our shoes and hung up our winter coats.  He gently but firmly collected my arm and pulled me close.

I pressed my face into the collar of Trowa’s shirt and despaired: “I threatened him with sixteen Pomeranians and he still didn’t find a chance to change his fucking will.”

He held me tighter.

“I can’t do this, Tro.  I can’t run a company.  I don’t want this.  I—”

“You don’t have to run or do or decide anything tonight,” he soothed, herding me toward the bathroom and the shower.  Just like that night in Vientiane, he stripped me down to my underwear and got the hot water running.  It was easier to just go with it than argue for the sake of arguing; I certainly didn’t have any better ideas at the moment.  So I got in the damn shower.  It was as good a place to hide as any, I supposed.  He came into the room while I was still trying to dissolve myself into a sludge that would fit down the drain and laid out my pajamas on the countertop.

“I’m so sorry,” I choked out as I watched his form move around through the pebbled glass of the shower door.

“Hush,” he replied.  “I told you I’d stay no matter what and I meant it.”

“Yeah, but now it’s all official and—”

“Are we partners?” he pressed.

I braced my hands on the wall and bowed my head in defeat.  The hot water hissed and dripped around my hair-plastered shoulders, peeling back my layers until I was face-to-face with the truth: “Yes.”

“Then finish up and come out.  It’s too quiet out there.”

I gritted my teeth and smiled.  It was either that or sob.

I don’t know how he did it, but Trowa got me through that night and the day that followed.  I felt… numb yet panicked.  I was in a perpetual state of disbelief and yet over-sensitized.  I don’t think Trowa took his arm from around my waist or shoulders once the entire time… except for bathroom breaks, of course.  The day I needed his support just to take a piss was gonna be… well, bad.  It’d be epically bad.

And, to top it all off, I still had to go get that damn physical before Friday.  Yippee.

I considered just saying to hell with it.  I didn’t need the stress.  I could quit the swim team.  No one would blame me.  But, damn it, my dad had been so proud when I’d placed in the top five at the regional swim meet last fall.  Hell, _I’d_ been so damn proud.  It seemed like a lifetime ago.  Or maybe an alternate dimension.

What had happened to that kid whose biggest conundrum had been whether or not to confess to his best friend that not only was he a swimmer, but a damn good one?  I’d kill to be that guy again, back when life had been so pathetically simple.  I’d had silly problems then.  And the antidote to my mediocre anxiety had only been a text message or a phone call away.

Now Trowa was closer.  _We_ were closer.  And as the pressure around me mounted, I felt myself gravitating toward him more and more.  I was beginning to understand that I needed to be as close as I could physically get to him.

“I need a blood test to check for STDs,” I told the doctor on Tuesday morning.  The sports clinic wasn’t far from the school so I’d skipped my third period class and walked.  “Can you write that up separately?”

“Of course,” he said, as if it was just another flu shot request.

I spoke with the receptionist-slash-nurse lady about having my paperwork sent to the school by Friday but the blood work results I’d pick up myself.  The whole thing took about an hour and I was all set.

“What are you going to do for Valentine’s Day?” Hilde asked me a week and a half later at lunchtime.

I poked at my salad and shrugged.  “Wake up, drink bad coffee, come to school—”

She rolled her eyes.  “I _meant,_ what are you going to get Trowa?”

I gave her a look of such animosity that she subsided without a peep.  Unfortunately, Dorothy took up the gauntlet.

“Have you invited him to the swim meet?”

The state swim meet was on Sunday, the 10th.  I hadn’t planned on inviting anyone.  I wasn’t sure I _wanted_ anyone to be there.  I was doing the freakin’ meet for my dad and I was probably gonna suck since my concentration was shot to hell.  I didn’t want the added pressure of having people I _knew_ watching me from the audience.  I performed better when I could be just another swimmer, just another kid from some preppy high school.

“You should ask him to come,” Dorothy announced, taking a genteel bite from her overcooked chicken parmesan.

“And when you become queen of the universe, maybe I will,” I retorted.  I gave the hell up on lunch and, standing, went to dump the contents of my tray and get the hell to my next class.  So what if I was fifteen freakin’ minutes early.  That’s what the bathrooms were for.

I spent those fifteen minutes contemplating the messages that had been scratched into and written with permanent marker on the walls of my chosen stall.  I counted the long-dried wads of toilet paper adhered to the ceiling.  It was totally unfair that so much stuff that had been stressing me out a few weeks ago had been resolved – I was now receiving a regular salary from the company and I no longer had a part-time job laying claim to my soul; my credit cards and assorted bills were all paid off; the apartment and utilities had been transferred over to my name; I’d gotten my freakin’ blood test results back from the doctor’s office – and yet I was more miserable than ever.  I focused on one breath at a time until the bell rang.

“Talk to me,” Trowa murmured, dumping his books on the coffee table and scooting closer to me on the sofa.  He’d just gotten back from his afternoon session at Sally’s and I hadn’t moved during the entire hour and a half he’d been gone.

“Kiss me,” I replied, craving something normal, something that made me feel.  He complied and we spent the whole evening just lying on the sofa together sometimes kissing, sometimes nuzzling, sometimes groping or massaging each other through our clothes.  It was like that night in Egypt all over again and I lost track of how many times I almost cried for no Goddamn reason at all.

I did a lot of things for no Goddamn reason at all.

“Sonuvabitch!” I snarled in the wake of shattering porcelain.

Trowa came charging down the hall, braced for battle.  I saw him scan the room as he jogged toward me.

“Duo?  What happened?” he asked, approaching the threshold of the kitchen.

I held up a hand.  “Stop.  Put some shoes on.  There’s glass all over the damn floor.”

He didn’t move.  “Are you injured?”

I shook my head.  Finally, he went to go put his boots on.  He came back with mine, too, and crunched his way across the floor to where I was standing.

“Up onto the counter,” he urged and, once I’d boosted myself up, he peeled off my socks and laced my shoes onto my bare feet.  “What happened?” he repeated.

I had no idea.  One minute, I’d been reaching into the cupboard for a coffee mug and the next…

I glanced past his shoulder at the bits of brightly painted white porcelain that had once been a Universe’s #1 Dad mug.  I’d gotten it for him for Father’s Day when I was ten, right after my mom and Solo had died.  I’d hoped it would cheer him up, but it’d just made him cry.

This morning, when I’d opened the cupboard door and seen it sitting there, I’d…  “I just snapped,” I whispered.

Sighing, Trowa wrapped his arms around me and I felt mine curl around his shoulders.  He pulled me to the edge of the counter and pressed his ear to my heart.

“Sorry I gave you a skrik,” I mumbled and he rasped out a rough chuckle, so I guess that meant I’d used the word correctly.

He helped me sweep up the mess.  I ran the vacuum cleaner just to be sure we’d gotten everything.  And then we had to gulp down our coffee before heading out the door for school.  I was growing to resent school.  The world was moving on.  So Goddamn normal and sedate.  I hated it.  It was easier to just tune everything out and doodle in my notebook during lectures rather than wrestle with the sudden rage that would swoop down and make me do things like hurl coffee mugs at the floor.

The only time the fog really seemed to lift was when I was in the pool.  These days, I no longer resented swim practice for wasting my time.  I needed it.  I could be angry and it felt _good._   I always started out drilling my way through the water, punching into the waves and dragging myself along, but when my arms got tired and the unfocused rage receded, I could enjoy the rhythm of it, the fluidity, the grace.  It was almost like flying.  Well, how I’d always imagined flying would be.

As the day of the swim meet drew nearer, I found myself better able to concentrate.  Sensing that I wasn’t gonna be a total waste of his time, Coach Otto started drilling me and clocking my times.  If I’d made any improvements in the last two and a half months, he didn’t say so.  I was kinda past the point of caring about my starting technique and finishing times.  Either I was gonna do well, or I wasn’t.  With only a handful of days to go, it was too late to do anything about it now.

“Hey, Dom.  Hold up a minute before you head out.”

“What’s up, Rod?” I asked, stuffing my necktie into my blazer pocket.  I’d had enough of the damn thing for one day.  No way was I putting it back on when my coat was gonna cover me from neck to knees anyway.

“Can I get a ride with you to the swim meet?”

“Uh, sure.  My car’s a piece of shit, though.  You know that, right?”

He shrugged.  “It runs.  That’s one up on mine this week.”

“What happened?”

“Transmission.”

I winced.  “Damn.  But, hold up.  You got that car new, like, two years ago.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, sending an accusatory glance in the direction of the showers where Alex and a couple of other guys were getting washed up now that Coach Otto had released them from practice.  Rod told me the gory details: “I gave Alex a ride home on Tuesday.  The moron was playing round and threw the gear into reverse while I was still driving down the road.”

“Whoa,” I remarked, stunned stupid by anyone doing something that dumb to a $25,000 car with a custom, 6-speed automatic transmission.  “Are you shitting me?”

“If only.  My dad is _pissed.”_

I could imagine.  Rod had one of the sweetest sets of wheels in the whole freakin’ school: a screw-me-stupid red 2010 Ford Mustang.

“Anyway, I don’t need a ride home.  My family’s coming up for the last round of finals in the afternoon, so I’ll probably go out for dinner with them.”

“Right.  I’ll pick you up at seven Sunday morning?”

“Thanks, man.”

Well, I guess that pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t have to worry about Trowa showing up and distracting me.  The only sticky point was how I was gonna get possession of the car without making him suspicious.  I’d have to be vague, imply that the event wasn’t anything big, something that was for team members only.  He’d never know the difference.

He was waiting in the parking lot, using the book light I’d dug outta my desk and given to him a couple weeks ago, doing his history homework.  I didn’t bother to knock on the hood or windows anymore.  He always seemed to know exactly where I was right from the moment I stepped out of the school doors.  True to form, he hit the door locks for me before I reached the handle.

“Hey, babe.  American history put you to sleep yet?”

“Hm,” he grunted softly with amusement.  “How was your day?”

“Eh, fine.”  I shrugged, watching him close the textbook and toss it onto the backseat.  “Hey, I’ve got a swim thing on Sunday—”

“State finals,” Trowa supplied, putting the car in gear.

I blinked.  Shit.  “Who told you?”

“Hilde.”

Damn it.  I never should have let her and Dorothy stomp their way over to my car with me after school our first Wednesday back so they could meet Trowa.  As far as long-awaited introductions went, it’d been pretty anticlimactic.  Or, that’s how it had seemed at the time.  Clearly, there were repercussions to take into account: I was sensing that this little development was the first of many shockwaves.  God only knew what else she and Dorothy might have talked about with Trowa while he was waiting for me to get done with practice on any given Tuesday or Thursday.

“Uh, right.  Well, I’m gonna need the car.  I gotta give Rod Walker a ride.”

Trowa glanced at me.  “We’ll all go together.”

Oh, super.  “Don’t, um, take this the wrong way, but if I know you’re in the audience – er, y’know, watching me – I’m not gonna be able to concentrate.”  When he didn’t say anything, I added, “At all.”  Again, more silence.  I sighed.  “I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” he finally said.  His tone surprised me.  He sounded… flattered.

“And you’re OK with not being there?” I checked.

He glanced my way, smiling.  “I asked you to tell me what you need.”

Yeah, he had, but…  “That was a while ago.”

“There was never an expiration date on it.”

I didn’t deserve him.  “You’re awesome.  You know that, right?”

He chuckled.  “I’m learning from the best,” he answered.  His teeth flashed in the dark in the shape of a sexy smile.

I was still thinking about that smile and the kiss that had later followed it.  And, yeah, I was also thinking about the totally hot fumbling around we’d done on the sofa that night.  It was kind of amazing that we still hadn’t gotten around to taking any of our clothes off yet.  In some ways, it was more like mutual equipment maintenance than actual, y’know, sex.  Trowa didn’t seem to mind, but that splinter of something that had been bothering me since we’d left Vientiane was getting more and more difficult to ignore.

Well, now was not the time to think about it.

“Hey, Dom.  Thanks for the ride,” Rod said on a yawn as he slid into the passenger seat.  His steaming thermos joined mine in the plastic cup holders on the dash.

“No problem,” I grunted.  I’d spent all day yesterday at the office in one meeting after another and then I’d spent all evening trying to get as much homework as passably done as possible.  So, yeah, I was tired and grouchy.  Somehow, it hadn’t helped that Trowa had merely fixed a thermos of coffee for me, handed me my car keys, and wished me luck today.  I’d been bracing myself for one last-ditch attempt at convincing me to let him come along… or an ultimatum… or something.

There was no reason on Earth for me to be irritated because I’d gotten my way without a fight, but I was.  I was flamin’ torqued.  I sighed.  Fuck it; I was a headcase.

As we hit the highway out of town, Rod cleared his throat and segued clumsily, “So… is your girlfriend going to be there today?”

I gave him a sidelong stare.  “Stop fishing, man.  This conversation ain’t happening.”

He rolled his head toward the window on a sigh.  “Damn.  You are, like, the only guy in school who doesn’t brag about getting laid.  That’s just not normal, man.”

“So I’ve been told.”  I smirked.

“Even guys who don’t get any brag about gettin’ some,” he continued with single-minded fixation.

“Dude.  Are you seriously gonna make me ask you about _your_ sex life just so you shut up about mine?  Seriously?”

He laughed.  “Sorry, Dom.  It’s just… it’s driving everybody nuts trying to figure out who you’re seeing.”

I rolled my eyes.  “The hell.  How sad is that: _my_ personal life is the biggest news around.”

“Well, it wasn’t like half the girls in school didn’t wanna have your baby before, but now that you’re in charge of your dad’s company…”

I snorted.  “Right,” I mocked.  “Half the girls in school might be after the Maxwell fortune – _that_ I could believe.”

Rod stared at me.  “You totally don’t get it.”

“Probably not,” I allowed, and I wasn’t really all that interested in getting it, either.

Rod gave up.  Finally.  “It just boggles the mind how you can be an effing genius about school stuff and then miss _this.”_

Damn it.  When he put it like that, I _really_ wanted to know.  Whatever.  I’d ask Hilde later.  I didn’t want to stoop to Rod’s level and start gossiping about _myself._   How lame was that.

This year, the state swim championships were up north at an old Olympic training facility.  The building was practically falling down around our ears, but the instant the scent of chlorine hit my nose, none of it mattered.  I signed in, collected my participant number, and headed for the locker room so I could start getting my head together.

These things were always dream-like.  I figured it was because there was so much that was familiar – the smell of the chlorine, the dimensions of the pool, the purposeful way people moved around – it was exactly like the swimming facilities at school.  But there was this general wrongness about the place: the color of the walls was off; the layout was warped in strange ways; I didn’t recognize the majority of the faces.  I belonged here in this alien environment even though I shouldn’t.  Did that make sense?  Probably not.  I was a headcase, after all.

There weren’t many people in the stands for the a.m. half of the state swim meet.  These were just the qualification rounds.  The exciting stuff would happen after lunchtime.  And even then, the stands would only be getting warmed by parents and younger siblings who had gotten dragged away from their video games.

I claimed a locker and straddled a bench across from a full length mirror and then proceeded to ignore the universe as I rebraided my hair.  I hated wearing it braided tight, but I had to get the whole damn mess stuffed up underneath my swim cap.  Coach Otto thought I was nuts for keeping it long.  Maybe I was.  But I still remembered when my mom had used to braid it for me.  Sometimes that was all I could clearly remember about her: the gentle pull of her fingers, the song she’d hum under her breath, that sort of thing.  I couldn’t cut my hair and lose that.  I wouldn’t.  So I swam with a handicap.  I didn’t mean to let it get in my way today, though.

Team warm ups started at nine twenty a.m. and I was more than ready for ‘em.  I was slotted for the one-hundred-meter butterfly, the two-hundred-meter freestyle, the four-hundred-meter freestyle relay, and the two-hundred-meter medley relay.  I splashed down the lane in Rod’s wake and tried to conserve my energy.

The whole day was your typical hurry-up-and-wait.  Tension stalked me as I waited for my first event to be called.  Then it coiled around my legs and lungs as I braced myself for the shot of the starter pistol.  And finally, there was a few seconds – under a minute – of excruciating action and striving and fighting and gliding and _just-a-little-faster-a-little-more-reach-God-damn-it!_ and the cut was announced.

I hated qualification rounds.  All that effort and you were only halfway to the end.  It sucked.

Rod passed me a cardboard pastry box of somewhat dried-out sandwiches when break time rolled around.  I could hear more activity echoing over the water and into the locker room.  The seats were filling up.  The atmosphere was thickening with expectation, anticipation, and a whole slew of other “–T-I-O-N” words.  My right leg bounced spasmodically as I forced myself to nibble through the sandwiches.  I couldn’t have told you what was in ‘em – something mild like butter and cucumber slices, probably – but it didn’t matter.  We had thirty minutes to digest and then it was back in the water for the second warm-up.  I tried not to think about the kids who would be sitting on the sidelines while their parents, who had driven out here to hopefully see them compete in the final rounds, watched kids they didn’t know win stuff their kids hadn’t.

Generally, I tried not to look too closely at the crowds.  Today, I had no reason to look.  No one I knew would be there.  I focused on the final round of my first event: the butterfly.  I loved this race the best.  Once you launched and set up a rhythm, it really was like flying.  My heart was pounding as I braced myself for take-off.

The shot came.

I soared over and beneath the surface of the water.  And then it was one booming, massive splash after another.  A timely gasp of breath.  Water churned at me from the lanes on either side but no, don’t look left, don’t look right.  _Nothin’ there to see,_ I coached myself and focused on the flight.

Touch the tiles, dive, spin, shove.  I torpedoed through the water, coming up before the fifteen-meter line for another chance at an instant of zero G.  The announcer’s voice warped and wobbled.  People cheered.  The water surged and splashed.  I breathed.  My muscles burned.  Cool water slid over my skin.

Another wall, dive, spin, shove, up for breath.  Over halfway.  Make it last.  Don’t burn out.  Stay ahead.  Am I behind?  Can’t see the guys two lanes over.  Nothin’ there to see anyway.

Touch, dive, spin, shove, last lap, last chance, last ounce of strength.  Teeth-gritting, heart pumping, ears jamming with the cacophony of the splashing water, gargled announcements, Doppler-affected cheers and then—!

Touch-down.  It was over.

I reached up and peeled my goggles off, letting in the rest of the world.  Noise poured into my ears and I just rode it out as I got reoriented to life beyond the finish line.

The guys on either side of me were listening intently for the results to be announced, looking toward the scoreboard.  I just kept an eye on Coach Otto as I pulled myself out of the water.  When he smiled, I knew I’d done well.  When he fisted both hands in victory, I glanced up at the boards.

I’d come in first.

No freakin’ way.

_Sweet._

I was on a roll after that.  I managed fourth place in the individual freestyle and then our team came in sixth in the freestyle relay and third in the medley.  Rod looked like he was about to explode, he was so damn happy: we’d made the podium.  Well, not that there was actually a podium at the end of these things, but it was the thought that counted.

Not everyone was thrilled, though.  Alex had his speedos in a wad about something, dodging my hand when I offered to help him out of the water at the end of the race, but whatever.  He could ride that spandex until his balls turned blue and fell off for all I cared.

I couldn’t keep the stupid grin off of my face.

To this day, I still wasn’t sure what had brought me to the swim team, to hours spent drilling and weekends spent at the school gym doing weight training and trying not to irritate the varsity football players who could squash me like a bug.  It wasn’t as if swimming was much of a transferrable skill; I’d never take a mugger down with my backstroke technique.  Nearest I could figure, the impulse to swim was in the same general category as the one that had drawn me up onto that tree branch over a green-eyed boy cleaning a rifle in the middle of the Egyptian desert.

The memory was almost enough to make me wish Trowa were here.

By the time I got done in the locker room – hair washed, dried (sort of), and comfortably rebraided – the diving competition was winding down.

“Good job, Dominic,” Coach Otto congratulated me.

“Thanks to you, Coach,” I replied, sounding like a freakin’ suck-up, but I didn’t care.  This was the end of the road for me.  I knew I wasn’t good enough (or interested in being good enough) to compete on the university level.  It was good to walk away with a ribbon or two.

When I stepped forward to acknowledge my first place performance in the hundred-meter butterfly and bowed my head so the medal could be placed around my neck, a shrill whistle pierced the generic applause.  It was one of those sounds that could travel for miles over rolling countryside and it rang out like a gunshot here in the enclosed space.  I reacted.  Looking up from shaking the presenter’s hand, I found myself meeting a familiar green gaze half concealed by brown hair: Trowa.

Oh… my… God.

He was _here._

I blinked.  I reminded myself to breathe.

And then a motion on Trowa’s left explained it all; Hilde had an arm around Dorothy as she waved and cheered.  Dorothy gave me a smirk and a thumbs-up.

Holy freakin’ cow.  My friends had driven two frickin’ hours all the way out here just to watch the swim competition.  No, scratch that.  They’d driven two frickin’ hours to watch my swim meet _anonymously,_ honoring my request that I be left to do this alone because I’d flub it if I knew they were watching.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kick their respective asses or not.

I glanced at Trowa again.  It was hard to be angry when he was giving me that damn sexy smile of his.  Shit.  He almost looked – I dunno – proud of me?  In love with me?  Both?

Suddenly, I zeroed in on that splinter that had been jabbing me over and over again during the past seven weeks: Trowa was in love with me and I couldn’t bring myself to cop to being his boyfriend in public.  He deserved that.  He deserved someone who wasn’t afraid to be with him and damn what anyone else thought of it.  Was that why I hadn’t shared my blood test results?  Why we never made it beyond the sofa or out of our clothes?

For the record, the awards stage of a state championship tournament was _not_ the place to be having an epiphany.

I got through the team photos by smiling my fool ass off as fakely as possible.  Once we did the whole national anthem closing deal, pandemonium broke out: parents stampeded for the main entrance and leaned over the railing between the stands and the pool, calling to their kids.  I waved to Trowa and gestured in the direction of the parking lot.  He nodded and held up his cell phone.  Yeah.  That’d probably be best.

I checked with Rod and he confirmed that he was gonna catch a ride with his parents.  I looked in the direction he indicated and gawked at Miles and Sally standing off to the side beside Mr. and Mrs. Walker.  Christ, how many damn spectators in this building knew me personally?  Never mind.  I didn’t wanna know.

Shaking my head, laughing at my own idiocy and the immovable monster that fate was, I collected my gear from the locker room and dialed Trowa’s cell phone.

“Where did you park?” he asked right off the bat.

I let out a breath in relief.  Was it weird that I didn’t want to talk about the swim meet?  Maybe.  Probably.  To hell with it.  I visualized the parking lot in my mind’s eye and talked him over the lamppost nearest my space.

“I see it,” he told me.

“Did you bring the spare set of keys?”

“Of course.”

“Sweet.  I’ll be there just as soon as I crank open a can of whoop ass on this crowd.”

He chuckled.  “I’m sorry I’ll miss it.”

“I’ll bet you are.”  On that note, I hung up and ran the gauntlet through the main lobby.  I got through ignored, but had to dodge a couple of enthusiastically swinging elbows and a few sprinting and stumbling bodies.  Jeez.  You’d think it was New Year’s Eve at Times Square or something.

Sighing, shaking my head at the antics of grown adults who really ought to know better than to act like they were their kids’ age, I finally burst my way out of the building and into the snowy parking lot.  I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and started jogging down the line of cars.  I could see Trowa sitting in the driver’s seat of my Dodge P.O.S.  He probably already had the heater running.  The damn car was always more cooperative when he was in the driver’s seat.  It wasn’t freakin’ fair.

Speaking of injustices, I had no idea what I was gonna say to him about that sneaky maneuver he’d pulled off today with Hilde and Dorothy’s help.  I didn’t see either girls’ car, but I was sure one of them was parked around here somewhere…

“Hey, Dominic!”

I slowed down to a saunter and turned toward the sound of my name.  “Dude!  Alex!” I acknowledged, confused.  What the hell was he doing chasing me down in the parking lot when I’d been beneath his notice in the damn pool?  “What’s up?”

“Wanna talk to you about something.”

“Shoot, man,” I invited.  I was still moving in the direction of my car, one backward-step at a time.  Sure, I was mildly curious about what he wanted to say – maybe some sort of apology for being an ass after the medley? – but it was freakin’ _freezing_ out here and, with my slightly-damp hair, I was really noticing it.

“You’re the big cheese now.  Congratulations.”

Whoa, hold up.  How did winning one piddly event make me the big cheese?  “Huh?”

“Your dad left you the company, right?”

“Oh, that.  Yeah.”  I could feel my high from both the swim meet victories and finding Trowa in the audience fizzle into over-done, carbonized toast.  What a way to kill the mood.  Sheesh.

Alex continued, drawing closer, “Must feel really great.”

“What are you talking about?”  If he didn’t get to the damn point soon, I was gonna get irritated.  Like, _officially._

He sneered.  “I’m talking about having other people’s careers in the palm of your hand.”  He lifted a gloved hand and curled his fingers in until he made a fist.  The leather gloves creaked.

“Actually, that would be the sucktastic part.”  What kind of megalomaniac would get off on that kind of power trip, anyway?  Hold up.  I believe that question just answered itself.  But seriously, why the hell was Alex so damn interested in my freakin’ job description anyway?

When I asked him that very question, his expression hardened.  “Funny you should say that,” Alex replied.

“Ask him,” someone urged.  I glanced behind me and watched as Josh Mueller leaned up against the driver’s side door of my car, blocking Trowa in.  “Go on.”  He nodded for Alex to drop whatever bombshell he was carrying.

“Ask me what?” I replied warily, looking back at Alex and hating how off-balance I was suddenly feeling.

“You canned my dad’s promotion.”

“His what?”  Promotion?  That’s what this hostility was all about?  A promotion that I hadn’t even known existed?

“See?” Mueller smirked.  “I told you he’d deny it.”

I groped for a conversational toehold: “What exactly am I denying here, guys?”

“My dad worked his ass off for Maxwell Limited for twenty years,” Alex informed me.  “And just when he was about to be named head of the New York branch, you went and reneged the deal.”

“What freakin’ deal?”

“Your dad promised him that position!”

This was news to me.  “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  But if he was telling me what I thought he was telling me – and if he was right – then this was the best news I’d gotten since Marshall had read my dad’s will.  I could go ahead with the promotion for Alex’s dad and keep the head of the London office in her position, _and then_ I could get on with being a college kid.  Oh my God.  My prayers had been answered.  “Alex, if you’re right about this—”

“What are you talking about?  Of course I’m right!  Are you calling my dad a liar?”

“What?  No, I—”

“You sonuvabitch!” Alex hissed.

I gawped at him.  How the hell had this conversation gotten turned around so ass-backwards so damn fast?

I didn’t have time to contemplate the answer to that.  In the next instant, Alex’s fist was on a collision course with my face.  I ducked, dancing and skidding back toward the passenger’s side door of the car.

“You—!”  Alex was too incensed for words.  I dodged a right hook – Solo had always been partial to those – and tried to gain some distance between us by swinging my gym bag at his chest.  He stumbled back a step.  Distantly, I heard the sound of a car window buzzing down.

Alex came at me a third time.  Right, this was starting to get old.  I stepped into it and he pounded my shoulder awkwardly.  I introduced my fist to his diaphragm.  He wheezed.  I took a step back and came up short against the side of my own car.

The sound of flesh smashing into metal jerked my attention over to Mueller.  I was just in time to watch his forehead finish its bounce off of the roof of the car.  His eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped out of sight.  I glanced down at Trowa and saw him use his grip on Mueller’s jacket through the open window to shove him away from the vehicle.  He then threw his other arm out across the passenger’s seat, aiming for the handle.  I flinched back reflexively as Trowa shoved the door open, bashing it into Alex, who was just getting his second wind.  The impact sent him crashing into the neighboring car which a very large and very unavoidable pickup truck.

“Get in,” Trowa ordered.

I got in.

He pulled out with only a cursory glance in the rear view mirror.  I looked back over my shoulder and grimaced.  Both Alex and Mueller were out cold, sprawled in the snow, and it was getting dark out.  “Shit.  D’you really think we should just leave them there?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t dare argue with the look on his face.  Holy fuck.  He looked ready to stop the car, back up over their prone bodies, and then get out and tear them limb from limb before stomping them into preppy boy Slurpee juice.  “They might end up castrated via hypothermia,” I heard myself say.

Trowa barked out a laugh.  “The American dream.”

That made _me_ bark out a laugh.  I looked back once more and I thought I saw Alex twitch before we turned down the parking lot aisle and exited onto the street.

“Put your seatbelt on,” Trowa whispered.

I startled and looked at him.

“Please,” he added.

“Oh, right.  Yeah.”  I buckled up.  After a long moment, I finally blinked, smiled, and said, “Dude, Tro.  You totally made my piece-of-shit car kick both their asses.  _Awesome!”_

He threw back his head and laughed, louder and longer this time.  “My pleasure.”

I believed it, too.

“What was that about?” he asked after I wound down.

I shook my head.  “Business stuff, if you can believe it.”

He glanced my way.  “Not because of…?”

“Because of what?”

He recurled his fingers around the steering wheel.  Speaking through gritted teeth, he grated, “Not because you’re with me?”

“What?  No.”  No, only Hilde and Dorothy knew there was something between Trowa and me.  Oh, and Sally because the woman had freakin’ x-ray vision.  And Marshall Noventa had probably figured it out (or been briefed on it by Thomas Darlian).  But I hadn’t actually told anyone how I felt about Trowa or what we were to each other.  Not a soul.  Suddenly, I was ashamed of myself for that.  To distract myself, I gave Trowa a summary of Alex’s accusations.

A moment of contemplative silence swelled up in the car after I got through the retelling.  “What are you going to do about it?” he finally asked.

I sighed.  “I guess I’ll be calling my dad’s secretary during lunch on Monday and requesting whatever he’s got on this promotion thing.”  Then, following that thought, I added, “And I guess I’ll be having a conversation with Robert Ruthford about his son.  The guy needs to know…”  I trailed off with a wince.  What fun that little chat that was gonna be: _“Hey, man.  Your son totally talked trash to me and tried to kick my ass ‘cuz he thought I wasn’t gonna give you the leg-up my dad promised you.”_   Oh, super.  But it had to be done.  Alex was a loose cannon and Mueller was at the helm.  How scary was that?

“Are you going to give him the promotion if it’s legitimate?”

I nodded.  “I’ll have to order an official performance review if it hasn’t been done already, but yeah.  It solves a lot of problems.”

“Does it?”

“No, not really,” I admitted, “but it might push ‘em back until I graduate from college.”  And, I supposed that was the best I could hope for.

At the highway on-ramp intersection, Trowa braked to a full and complete stop and then turned to me.  His green eyes sparkled in the waning light.  “You were brilliant today.  Both in the car park and… before.  Fokken brilliant.”

“Yeah?  Thanks, babe.”  I reached out a hand to his cheek and smoothed my thumb over his skin.  His eyelids fluttered down and he let out a breath, leaning into my touch.  Was this the first time I’d touched him in public here in the States?  Maybe it was.  “I think I owe you a kiss for that,” I whispered.

He opened his eyes and smiled.  “I’ll collect when we get home.”

And whoo-boy, he sure did.  Two hours of driving did nothing to distract him from my promise.  The door shut behind us; Trowa threw the deadbolt into place and then wrapped me up in his arms, kissing the hell outta me right there on the welcome mat.

“You were amazing,” he growled some minutes and surging hot tongue action later.  His insistent nuzzling into my collar made me shiver and sweat with arousal.

My fingers slid along the smooth fabric of his down coat.  It was like trying to grasp shoulders made of clouds.  It irritated me and that weird feeling of being off-balance returned.  “I was?”

“You _are,”_ he corrected himself, “amazing, Duo.”

“Thanks for being there today,” I replied, grinning.  “Thanks for not listening when I asked you not to come.”

“You told me you needed to think you were alone.  You never asked me not to come.”

He was right.  Damn.  I’d totally left him a loophole.  “Are you sure you don’t wanna be a lawyer?” I checked.  “Because I’m sensing some definite, underhanded potential awesome, here.”

He leaned back until our noses were touching and his bangs were tickling my cheek.  “I think I do all right at being your security goon,” he murmured.

My grin felt crooked so that probably meant that it was.  “Yeah.  You rock at that.  Total credit where it’s due.”

He brushed the back of his knuckles over my cheek.  “You’re one hell of a fighter,” he praised softly.  “And you swim like…”  He shook his head, clearly at a loss for words.

“Like?” I prompted nervously, needing to know his thoughts on this more than anything.

“Yah,” he replied.  “I liked it very much.”

He kissed me again, softly and reverently, holding me close.  Standing there in the foyer, still wearing my snow boots and wool coat, I’d never felt more loved.

And it was time I came clean with him about that.  Long past time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve never been involved in school sports or sporting events (aside from my marching and pep band years), and I couldn’t find much on how swim meets generally go, so yup. Lots of Artistic License in this part.
> 
> And if you wanna see Trowa kicking ass as a lawyer, you MUST read Clara Barton’s A Little Less Normal on fanfiction.net but mind the rating and warnings, m’kay?


	10. Team Work, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Theme song: "Endlessly" by The Cab

We crashed on the sofa that night.  Trowa picked a movie, but I couldn’t have told you what it was.  I was wiped out from the swim meet so I just leaned back against his chest and snuggled into his arms.  His cheek pressed against my hair as actors delivered lines of dialog and stuff happened on the TV screen.

The next day, he dropped me off at school looking easily twice as alert as usual.  “Call me if you need me,” he urged.

“I always have,” I replied and daringly gave his jean-covered thigh a squeeze before I hopped outta the car.  He hissed in reaction, but I already had both feet on the slick asphalt and was shutting the door behind me.  The look on his face promised delicious retaliation.  I winked.

Since I didn’t have any classes with either Alex or Mueller, it was a cinch avoiding them.  At lunchtime, I grilled my dad’s poor secretary over the phone about this supposed promotion… which was legitimate, evidently.

“Y’know, it might have been helpful if I’d known about this a little sooner,” I chastised him.  And then I cut into his litany of apologies with one of my own, “No, I’m sorry.  That was a shitty thing to say.  I’m taking my bad day out on you, man.”

Silence echoed back to me.  Apparently, he’d never had a boss talk to him like that.  Oh yeah, working for me was bound to be a thrill-a-minute.

“Just send over copies of that stuff, will you?  Contracts, performance reviews, personnel files, whatever I need to look at and sign to get it done.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now don’t hang up on me,” I hurriedly added.  “Transfer me to Robert Ruthford’s office first.”

He did and then I started our chat by asking, point blank, “Do you want to be head of the New York office?”

I didn’t know shit about offering promotions or conducting job interviews and I wasn’t even sure if my dad had trusted this guy completely – I sure as hell didn’t; I didn’t even know him – but he didn’t talk down to me and he didn’t hesitate to answer my questions about his goals for the future.

“Look,” I said, noting the time.  I had five minutes before my next class began and I needed to buy something from the cafeteria shop to stuff my face with before I sat down at my desk.  “Alex got in my face about this yesterday.  If he keeps it up, it’s gonna make it hard for me to trust you.”

“Alex did _what?”_

I sighed; his horrified reaction squashed the niggling suspicion that Ruthford had somehow egged his son on in his hate campaign.  “I don’t really have time to get into the details right now, but Josh Mueller probably put him up to it.  Just talk to Alex about your work and this promotion deal.  We need to get this straightened out and he’s not gonna listen to me.”

“I’ll speak with him.  I’m very sorry if he—”

I didn’t wanna be rude, but I hated it when parents apologized for the shit their kids did, so I interrupted him: “He clued me in to the fact that my dad had promised you a promotion.  I needed to know that.  He just didn’t need to gang up on me with his buddy, Mueller, to do it.”

I felt like a total tattle-tale, but – Goddamn it – I did not have the time or the patience to sort this out.  Alex was not gonna be a blip on my radar.  I wasn’t gonna _let_ him be a blip on my radar.  Clearly, the miscommunication was between him and his father.  I was not gonna get involved.

Ruthford promised to handle it and, if he did… well, it wouldn’t hurt his chances with regards to me signing off on that promotion.

I bought a couple of granola bars, nodded to a puzzled-looking Hilde, and headed for class.  She was probably wondering why I hadn’t read her the riot act for telling Trowa about the swim championships and then conspiring to give him a ride there.  Fuck it.  I had French III to worry about.

This was yet another aspect of Trowa’s legacy: I hadn’t just signed up for the swim team; I’d started taking French.  He still didn’t know about that.  Someday, maybe I’d surprise him by starting up a conversation with: _“Que veux-tu pour ton anniversaire, mon amour?”_

Which made me wonder just what Trowa _would_ want for his birthday…

I could have asked for Hilde’s two cents on the issue, but I didn’t have time to hang around after school chatting today.  “Tro’s picking me up and then he’s got something to do so I gotta boogie,” I run-on-sentenced at her in passing.

“Hey, at least tell me one thing!” she protested, hurrying after me.

“What?” I demanded, hustling down the steps.

“Are you mad?”

“Mad like a fox!”

“No, doofus!  Are you mad because I told Trowa about the swim meet and gave him a ride up there?”

I paused and gave her a grin.  “No, Hils.  I’m not mad.  Thanks for that.”

She smiled and let out a relieved breath.

“Now I really gotta run!”  This time, she let me go.

“Where’s the fire?” Trowa asked as I dive-bombed into the passenger’s seat.

“No idea,” I replied.  “I just don’t wanna make you late for Sally’s.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I’m sure she’d understand.”

“How’s that going, by the way?” I asked.

He shrugged.  “She has me write summaries of my history lectures.”  His face twitched into a slight grimace.

I cackled.  “Just wait until you get around to the five-paragraph, standard essay.  So much fun.”

“What a jol.  I can hardly wait.”

And, speaking of waiting, I figured he’d done enough of that.  As we rode the elevator up to Sally’s floor, I cleared my throat and remarked, “Uh, I had to get a physical before I could go to the swim meet.  It’s a standard procedure thing.”

Trowa’s gaze slid in my direction.  “Yah?” he prompted when I just let the statement hang there.

I had to glance away from his searching look.  “And… I got my blood test done at the same time.”

He stiffened.

I continued, awkward as hell and face flaming, “I’m clean.  All negative, I mean.”  I cleared my throat again.

Before I could ask, he volunteered, “As well.  I had one done at the school.”

I nodded, still staring at the elevator doors.  “Yeah, it’s a nice school.  The health center really sold me on it, plus the career guidance—”

“Bloody hell, Duo!” Trowa suddenly swore.  “You’re telling me this in the bloody lift, on my way to fokken _tutoring?”_

I tried to suppress my rueful smile.  “I guess my timing still needs some work, huh?”

“You could say that.”

I wheezed out a laugh.

“Duo…”

The elevator was slowing.  The doors would be opening any moment.  Trowa reached out and punched the Emergency Stop button.

I gaped.  “What—?”

Trowa answered with actions rather than words, crowding me against the wall and kissing me hard and deep.  His hands tore at my coat buttons and – holy fuck – he was rubbing against me, rocking in a way that was electrifying my entire body, making me sweat and tingle and _harden—!_

He pulled back as suddenly as he’d attacked.  We were both panting, wanting, throbbing.

“I could almost hate you for this,” he told me, but his tone was soft and teasing, a wading pool left in the wake of a tsunami.

I jumped in with both feet.  “What are my odds?”

“Seventy percent,” he replied, smirking.

I countered, “I can do a lot with thirty.”

He brushed his lips against mine and breathed, “I’m looking forward to it.”

Then he reached out and disengaged the Emergency Stop.  When the doors slid open and he stepped out into the hall, I called, “Hey, don’t forget to turn your phone back on when you’re done.”

He paused and looked back at me.  “It’s always on.  What are you scheming?”

I smirked.  “You’ll see.”  Then I hit the Close Door button and finished the journey home.

I dumped my stuff on the floor, kicked off my shoes, hung up my coat, went to my room and just… had a moment.

Seriously, what was I thinking?  Was I really ready for this?  Was I ready to move past our secretive fumbling and take that Next Step?

Maybe not.  But I _wanted_ to be ready and the only way I was gonna know if I actually _was_ ready was to try.  It still scared the hell outta me, but there was no Goddamn way I was gonna have sex with Trowa and then pretend like we were just roommates or good buddies or something afterwards.  I was already ashamed of myself for getting off with him on the sofa time and time again over the past five weeks and acting like I’d just scratched a freakin’ itch.

It was a miracle Trowa hadn’t belted me for being such an ass.

My selfish dick impersonation was now officially over and done with, but the real question was whether I was ready to be Trowa’s boyfriend _in public._   It was time for me to answer the third question he’d asked on our last morning in Vientiane: was I gonna give him a chance?  My answer was (and always had been) a resounding _yes._   Still, it was one thing to fantasize about it and another thing to actually _do_ it.

Not that Trowa seemed to have a problem with it, but then I was the headcase, here.  In fact, he was totally waiting on me to get my shit together: the surprise visit to my school on that first day, the hickeys, how paranoid he was of coming on too strong, how he usually kept an arm around me when we were hanging out on the sofa, how he always bumped my elbow as I made coffee and he got the cups out in the mornings… little stuff like that.  Sonuvabitch.  I totally deserved to get my ass kicked for blithely ignoring all the signs.  Not that Trowa was the type to make me a cut-out Valentine’s Day card as a declaration of his eternal devotion, but he’d certainly spelled it out a dozen other ways.

And, this was the kicker: I _wanted_ him to keep it up.  I didn’t want to discourage him or put him off.  I wanted to _go for it:_ all Trowa, all the time; 24/7.  I was _not_ gonna just sleep with him and then not own up to it after the fact.

Which brought me back to the whole can-I-really-handle-this issue.  Damn it.

With a sigh, I sat down on my rumpled bed – I’d never seen a point in making the bed; I mean, you’re just gonna mess it up anyway in a few hours so why bother? – and clasped my hands between my knees.  Elbows braced on my thighs, I thought about what had been holding me back: I was afraid that people would hate me because I was with Trowa.  Hell, I was afraid they’d hate _Trowa._   I didn’t want to screw up his future by subjecting him to prejudice before he’d even figured out what he wanted to do with his life.  I didn’t want to hurt him like that, but Trowa was a big boy and he undoubtedly suspected what he’d be facing if he was my boyfriend.  A smart guy like him would know the risks and I trusted his judgment.

Besides, it wasn’t as if people needed a legitimate excuse (or even bigotry or intolerance) to make our lives miserable and difficult.  Alex and Mueller had already proven that.  If someone wanted to hate either or both of us, they’d find a reason and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

So, really, it didn’t matter what the whole damn world thought.  I wasn’t going to let them ruin things between Trowa and me.  I wanted to be with him.  End of discussion.

Sighing, I stood up and peeled off my school uniform and draped it over its usual place of dubious honor: my desk chair.  Standing in my cluttered room in my underwear, I checked the time.  Trowa wouldn’t be back for something like an hour.  I pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt and decided to do something torturous.  Something as torturous as Trowa’s tutoring session undoubtedly was: I cleaned.  I vacuumed the apartment.  I emptied and reloaded the dishwasher.  Yes, I even attacked the bathroom with rubber gloves and a long-handled brush.  I dusted… until I got too bored with it to care.  At least the TV screen was de-fuzzed.  Clearly, that was top priority.

When I ran out of stuff to do, I splashed some cold water on my face and retreated to my room.  I sat back down on the bed and pulled the tie off of the end of my braid.  With one hand, I began picking apart the weave.  With the other, I pulled out my cell phone and opened a text message window.

I took a deep breath and began.  //Hypothetically speaking, if you came home and found me naked in bed, what would you do?//

Gritting my teeth, I sent the message.  I then forced myself to set the phone down on the bedside bureau.  Even if he got the message right now, he wouldn’t reply right away.  He’d have to wait for the end of his lesson and I wasn’t gonna sit here, phone in hand, obsessing.

I brushed out my hair slowly, contemplating what I was about to do.  Imagining it was both terrifying and almost painfully arousing.

I was startled out of my porny daze when my phone buzzed about ten minutes later with an incoming message.  It was from Trowa.

//Hypothetically speaking?  Die of lust.//

I laughed.  The sound was too harsh but oh God had I needed that.  Grinning, I pulled my T-shirt off and chucked it in the direction of my closet.  //That wouldn’t be very, um, helpful.//  I sent that reply and clutched my phone in the nerve-wracking silence.

//What would you prefer?//

I took a deep breath.  Right.  Now we came to it: it was time to tell him what I wanted.  //Being hard would be a good start.//

//Not an issue.//

So he was already, uh, responding.  Come to think of it, so was I.  //And I’d want mouth and hands in good working order.//  I flushed so badly I started sweating; I almost couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with him.

//Where would you graft them?//

Holy fuck that sounded hot.  My hormones roared their approval, shoving anxiety and discomfort into the bedroom closet and bracing the door shut with a sturdy chair.

I replied.  //Wherever they wanted to go.//  There.  I’d said it.

Trowa confirmed it.  //No limits on those?//

//None.  What about you?//

//No limits.//

Yeah, I could believe that.  Heart pounding in my chest, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, which made me realize my jeans weren’t exactly comfortable.  I took them off and kicked them away.  Before I could lose my inertial courage, the socks and underwear got tossed aside, too.  But I couldn’t bring myself to just sit here buck naked.  I pulled the sheet over my legs and hips.

I could do this.

My phone buzzed again.

//Duo, are you sure?//

//Yes.//  Thank God you couldn’t stutter in a text message.

I heard his key in the door.

Suddenly, the “no limits” comment seemed open to way too much interpretation.  Hurriedly, I texted, //I’m just not up for all the way.//

//All the way?// he checked.  I was waiting for the sound of the door opening, holding my breath for it… nothing.

Jaw clenched, I fought against the apocalyptic embarrassment and just came out and said it: //You in me, or the other way around.  Not yet.//

//But my mouth is all right?//

God, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes.  He’d actually typed that out.  Oh, damn.  Right, this anxiety was getting old.  It was time to kick it to the curb for the trash collectors to take away.  Assembling my determination, I purposefully envisioned what Trowa had implied.  I almost didn’t notice it when I licked my lips as I imagined Trowa’s mouth _there,_ panting hot breaths before he swallowed me down.  Was I gonna be OK with that?  The answer was most definitely— //YES.//

Finally, the apartment door opened.  I tensed.  I forced myself to relax.  With every tiny sound of Trowa setting down his bag, hanging up his coat, untying his boot laces, I tensed again.  And, every time I caught myself doing it, I focused on that mind-blowing visual of him, me, us, touching each other like _real_ lovers.  Christ, I wanted that.

I heard him moving around, checking the living room and the kitchen.  Finally, his footsteps paused outside my door.

“Duo?” he called softly.

I took a deep breath.  “It’s open.”

I watched the knob rotate, turning so slowly it was as if time had been cut to a fraction of its normal speed.  And then the bottom edge of the door was brushing against the carpet fibers.  I looked up, hair flowing around my bare shoulders and my cell phone still clutched in my hands.

Trowa inhaled sharply and then reached out and grabbed the doorframe.

“Are you OK?” I checked, wondering if I’d ditched my clothes too soon.

He nodded once.  “You let your hair down.”

“Oh.”  How interesting that it was a factor.  “Well, I… I…”  My face flamed.  Damn it, why was it so hard to talk about this shit?  I bent my head down to my cell phone and texted the words that I couldn’t say.  //I want this to be real, so this is me.  Just me.  I’m not gonna hide behind my school uniform and stuff anymore.//

I sent the message.  Trowa’s phone buzzed in his hand.  I watched him read my explanation.  He closed his eyes and I swear I could almost see a shudder work its way through him.  When he opened them again, he studied me like he was preparing to take an exam and I was the topic.  Yes, things were looking up.  That was definite interest I was seeing in his eyes, but then a flicker of unease touched his features.  What the hell was the problem now?  I thought _I_ was supposed to be the one with the issues, here.  My free hand fisted in the sheet.

For a moment, I thought he was going to just come right out and say whatever was on his mind, but he followed my example, turning back to his phone to text me.  //I’m not like you.  I have a lot of scars.//

He was insane if he really thought I’d care about that.  Well, I supposed it was up to me to prove it to him.  I focused on that single purpose, nominated it as my new source of strength and steadied myself against it.  I put my conversation aid on the bureau and then I held out a hand, gesturing him closer.

“Show me.”  I would be the judge of how horrible his scars were, and I doubted they were all that horrible.  He was just worrying too much.

He moved into the room, closing the door behind him.  I watched as he crossed toward the nightstand and set his phone down beside mine.  I think I saw his hand tremble, but no.  It must have been my imagination.

Our gazes locked as he straightened.  And then he grasped the hem of his U of D sweatshirt and the long-sleeved T-shirt underneath and drew both up over his head.  I didn’t even hear it when they hit the floor; I was already preoccupied.  Sure enough, there was a scar on his chest, a vicious one running left to right, just below his ribcage and under his heart.  I reached out and traced it with my fingertips.  He sucked in a breath as I measured it.  It was over six inches long, straight and faded.

“What did this?” I asked.

“A machete,” he replied.

“How old were you?”

“Nine or ten.”  I traced the aged injury from one end to the other, memorizing it, picturing Trowa as a little boy cut open and bleeding, trying to clamp the wound shut as his blood soaked his T-shirt and vest.  He’d nearly been disemboweled.  Just imagining it scared the bejesus outta me.  Goddamn but I wanted to kill someone.

“It didn’t happen a second time,” I observed instead of swearing to hunt down and dismember the sonuvabitch who’d done this to him when he was just a little kid.

He explained in a soft, factual tone: “I learned to be more careful.”

And then he gently thrust my hand away.  I looked up, a protest on the tip of my tongue, but his eyes stopped me.  He watched me like this was his last chance to… I dunno.  To see me wanting to touch him, maybe?  But that made no sense whatsoever.

He reluctantly turned around.

My mouth fell open.  Oh… my… God.  His back...!

I stood up and abandoned the sheet.  I was standing here bare-assed naked, but how could I care about that when _his back…!_

I reached out and touched the raised, darkened, and discolored flesh.  Trowa stiffened.

“Can I?” I asked, pausing until I got permission.  He nodded.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, tracing the damaged skin.  On his left shoulder blade, several deep gouges had scarred over heavily, creating slashing, arching lines over skin that looked like it had been splashed by something toxic and flammable just before being set alight.  The scars spanned his entire scapula, from the edge of his spine to the bony tip of his shoulder joint.  They were old.  As he’d grown, the skin had been pulled tightly in places, creating stretch marks in the areas covered by thinner, softer scar tissue.

I had the sudden, crazy image of my Trowa as an angel.  I could almost see the Devil himself tearing his wing out at the joint with a hand of fire and brimstone and molten cruelty.

It was gruesome.

So, yeah, left side was bad.

The right side was worse.

“Trowa…” I breathed, smoothing my hand over the deeper and more plentiful gouges, the splash-pattern that somehow curled and plumed just like ragged feathers – so many feathers, large and small – all down his back.  From his shoulder to just above his waist.  The landscape of his skin made me think of those fossilized dinosaur remains crushed beneath river slate and put on display in museums.

If the Devil had gleefully torn out Trowa’s left wing, he’d surpassed himself with the right, setting it on fire and branding his victim with it, gifting him with a permanent reminder of what had been ripped away.

I traced the edge of those fossil-feathers.  Trowa shivered hard.

“I can put a shirt on,” he offered.

“What?  No!”  I pulled myself away from the fascinating territory in front of me.  “Don’t even think about it.  These scars are… _wicked.”_

Trowa startled, his chin jerking toward me.  “What?”

“Sorry,” I said, wincing as I realized how that must have sounded.  Maybe being an insensitive dick was a personality trait that I was gonna have to learn to live with.  “It must’ve hurt like a mother…!”

“I don’t remember,” he confessed.

“Oh, uh, in that case…”  Shit.  Now what?  Could I get away with telling him how awesome they were without sounding like a complete jerk-wad?  Probably not.  I sighed, petting his back from shoulder to waist.  “Wow,” I sighed.

“You… like them?”

“Better than a tattoo,” I affirmed, relieved that he’d been the one to say the words.  I traced the spine of one not-feather.  “Don’t tell me this is the first time anyone’s told you how sexy your scars are.”

His silence spoke for him.

“Damn,” I said, and then, unable to resist, I leaned forward and placed an open-mouthed kiss to a spot where normal skin met aged tissue.

“Ahh!”  His gasp just about echoed in the room.  His spine curved; his back muscles bunched; his hips twitched.  God _damn_ he was sensitive.  I traced another scar, scraping a bit with my nails.  He actually whined.

“You are incredibly sexy,” I repeated, reaching around and tracing the machete scar.  Somehow, I hadn’t noticed it before when I’d had my hands under his shirt.  I guess I’d been distracted by other things at the time.  There was nothing distracting me now, not from the seriousness of these old injuries or the terror of what might-have-been.

“How many times did I almost never meet you?” I whispered against his skin.

It wasn’t my imagination that he shuddered this time.  I felt it.  I heard him swallow thickly.

“This happened before your troupe took you in?” I asked, running my palm over his back as if I could read the story of his scars from touch alone.

“Yah.  An explosion.  It took out a shopping complex.  I was thrown clear.  I was maybe two or three years old.”

_He could have died._

He didn’t say the words, but they were there and they took a minute to sink in, but when they finally did…

Suddenly, I was completely overwhelmed by how _fragile_ he was.  Jesus Christ, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how a toddler had survived the wounds that had left _these_ scars.  And even though I was standing here totally _naked,_ all I wanted was to march over the Goddamn Atlantic Ocean and fucking obliterate the bastards who’d planted that damned bomb.  A burning, seething, merciless darkness rolled up from somewhere deep inside me.  “You could’ve died.”

I petted his marred and maimed skin, careful to keep my touch light even as I growled, “An’ that makes me wanna kill the fuckers who are responsible for doing this to you.”

Oh what hellish torment I would give them if only I knew their names, their faces.  Their fates would be mine to toy with as I liked.  Death would be too kind for the likes of them.  I would have their blood, their pain, their fear, their pleas for mercy—!

I startled when I felt Trowa’s fingers grip my hand.  I was clutching the machete scar as if it were still gaping open, gushing blood.

“It’s over,” he told me.  “I’m fine.”

I let out the breath that was burning me up from the inside out.  Leaning my forehead against his shoulder, I just inhaled and exhaled, letting his warmth and scent calm me.

I calmed, but I found no peace.  Behind my closed eyelids, I pictured the shopping mall.  For some reason, it was a beautiful day.  People were laughing.  Trowa’s father was holding the glass door open for his wife with one hand and was carrying his young son perched on his hip with the other.  And then—

BANG!

Dust.  Smoke.  Silence.  Screams.  Fire.

In my mind, Trowa had been blown clear, perhaps landing on a patch of landscaped grass, unconscious and with flames licking at his small back, shards of bloody glass sticking out of his tattered shirt like spines.  Alone and helpless and irreparably injured… and his parents trapped inside the rubble with the flames and fumes.  What a horrific way to die.  What a terrible way to lose your entire family.

“Jesus.”  I mouthed the torn skin across his shoulders.  I’d been wrong about his scars not being horrible; they were… but for different reasons than I’d anticipated.

His chest expanded as he took a fortifying breath before reaching for the front of his pants.  “There’s more.”

I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.  It was all I could do to keep from… from… I dunno.  The fury deep inside me, clawing and gnashing its teeth, was starting to freak me out.  I took a moment to center and fortify myself.  After a moment, I felt… well, not _fine_ but in control.

Good enough.

When I stepped back, I kept my palm on his shoulder.  I wasn’t about to let him go now.  “OK.”

I listened to the zipper grit and growl its way down and then Trowa’s hands were shoving at his jeans and underwear.  When the fabric bunched around his hips, I took over and pulled it the rest of the way off.  I had to force myself not to stare at his ass – which was unbelievably perfect – and look for the other scars he wanted to show me.  There were smaller marks – scratches, punctures, possibly even animal or insect bites – but I didn’t think he’d been talking about those.  Hell, I had my share of similar ones from skidding over gravel on my elbows and knees as a kid.  Plus the mementos from the standard close encounters of the outdoor kind.

What I think he wanted me to see was the long scar angled across the back of his left thigh.  Someone had tried to hamstring him.  And there was a gory starburst on the back of one calf: an exit wound from a bullet.  I touched those so he’d know that I’d found them.

“Machete again?” I asked, petting the scar on his thigh.

“Hunting knife.”

It wasn’t as faded as the machete scar, which meant it was more recent.  I couldn’t bring myself to ask when he’d gotten it.

“Rifle or pistol?” I inquired of the gunshot wound.

“A pistol, likely.”

He didn’t even know for sure.  Oh my God.  Was I looking at the evidence of someone _sniping_ at him one moonlit night?  Or was this the result of a firefight?  How close had the other bullets come to hitting him in the chaos?

I couldn’t deal with this.

I took another deep breath and, by a sheer act of will, I focused on the positives.  He was alive and he _had_ learned from his mistakes: there were no repeats of scars from the same weapon or in the same general location.  Thankful that he was all right and here with me, I leaned forward and pressed a butterfly kiss into the curve of his spine above his tailbone, massaging one of his feather scars with my thumb as I rubbed my palm over the hunting knife’s souvenir.

He let out a breath, a breath so deep I wondered how many he’d been hoarding.

If I hadn’t known their history, I would have envied him these scars.  Still, they were undeniable proof of his strength and they were inarguable evidence of his survival.  Trowa’s scars would have been the most amazing things I’d ever seen, if they hadn’t scared the bejesus outta me.

How many times had I almost lost him, Goddamnit?

“Duo?”

I gulped down a breath and stamped the rising tide of aimless fury back into its cage.

I was being a dick again.  He was freakin’ _awesome_ and I was leaving him hanging.  Maybe one day there’d be a time and a place for vengeance against anyone and everyone who had ever hurt him, but it wasn’t here and it wasn’t now.  Here and now was for him, for us, for the fact that we were both standing here without our clothes on.

The reminder sent a wave of predictable, hot arousal through me.  This I could deal with.  Gladly.  I straightened up, placed my hands on his waist and, pressing my mouth to his shoulder again, murmured, “You are so hot I can’t stand it.”

Looking at me over his shoulder, he advised, “Then lie down.”

Those green eyes could get me to hand over my immortal soul; lying down on the bed was a piece of cake.  I snagged his hand as I did, tugging him around to face me.  He followed, bracing himself with an arm on the headboard and a knee between mine.

My gaze darted downward and—

Yeah, I’d caught an eyeful before but now it seemed… different.  Holy shit.  He was naked _with me._

It kind of hit me then that there was no turning back.  Even if we stopped now, I was never gonna be able to go back to quick jerk-off sessions that merely relieved stress and burned off excess hormones.  This was the real deal.

My nerves were suddenly back in full force.  Yeah, I’d made it clear what we _weren’t_ gonna be doing today…  Not that I was completely against it in theory, but I was sure we’d both end up coming too damn soon for it to be any good.  And I desperately wanted it to be good.  Damn it, I was _ready_ for it to be good.  Heart-stoppingly, soul-searingly _good._

I stared at his uncircumcised length, wondered if that sheath of skin made him more sensitive or less, panted a little at the thought of tasting the glistening drop that had formed at the flushed head.  Trowa didn’t ask if I liked what I saw.  Given the standing ovation going on in my lap, I think it must have been obvious that I did.

I’d seen plenty of guys naked in the locker room – both at school and away at competitions – but this was different, so different.  He was so… vulnerable.  Open and aroused.  Trusting.

I remembered asking him what I’d done to earn his trust.  I still couldn’t believe it had been as simple as giving him mine.  And now here we were, moving into uncharted territory.

Oh, Christ.  Knowing that I was his first was such an unbelievable turn-on.

I scooted over to make room for him to lie down.  “Me, first,” I insisted, reaching out and drawing a single finger down the length of him once from base to head and then back before I brushed my knuckles over his balls.  They were tight.

He didn’t argue: he just looked at me with those soulful green eyes, bit his lip as I stroked him, and slid onto the mattress.  I leaned over him, moaning softly when I encountered bare, warm skin all down my chest and against my leg where I nudged his knee with mine.  Jesus, the feel of him was unbelievable.  It would have been so easy to just move things along and go for the finish line, but I couldn’t do it.  There was something about him that demanded reverence.  Maybe it was the scars.  Maybe it was the half dozen or so times he’d nearly died before I’d ever made that trip to Egypt with my dad.  Maybe it was both.

I braced myself against the instinct to devour him whole in a frenzy of possession and lust, and I urged his chin up, touching our lips together in a soft kiss, and oh what a kiss.  I steadied his jaw and he reached up to cradle the back of my head.  Our mouths parted in sync and our tongues met in a hot rush that felt like an unbreakable connection.  I groaned, dazed by the heat searing through me in twinkling waves that were almost pins-and-needles painful.  I kissed him again and again, and with every moment of initial connection, it only felt _better._   Eventually, I had to stop or I was never gonna get to the next item on the agenda.

He leaned up a bit, following me when I pulled away.  I softly rubbed my thumb over his lower lip.  God how I loved his mouth, his want, his passion.  “I want you,” I told him.

He inhaled sharply, staring into my eyes and I felt yet another zing of contact.  “Show me,” he murmured, using the same words I’d spoken to him not ten minutes ago.

Smiling, I sat up a bit and pulled my hair together in a lose twist before pressing it into his grasp.  “You are in charge of this.”

“My orders, sir?” he joked softly.

I grinned wider and winked.  “Just keep it outta my way.”

His reply of “Copy th—!” was cut short as I latched onto the nearest nipple.  His arms went around me and he pulled me on top of him.  With one knee between his, it was so deliciously easy to lower myself until I could drag my length down and back up his muscular thigh with lazy thrusts of my hips.  He wiggled and squirmed a bit until he could turn his leg to the side and then I was rubbing against the softer, smoother skin of his inner thigh.

“Mmm,” I approved, leaving off on the first nipple to rub my cheek against the other.  His whole body arched against me.  So responsive.  Not that I had anything to compare it to, but this struck me as uniquely Trowa.  Maybe even uniquely Trowa-with-me.  But I did not want to think about him being with anyone else.  I was not gonna ever be OK with someone else touching him like this.  Not as long as I was alive.

“You ticklish?” I checked, sliding my hips between his thighs completely as I moved further down his chest.

“Not particularly,” he panted.

“Mmm,” I approved again, applying my mouth to his defined abs.  Shit, how was he staying in such good shape?  I made a mental note to ask him later.

The further down I wriggled, the higher his straining length traveled along my belly and chest.  I could feel the cooling trail of precome against my skin as I moved lower and lower.  My mouth started to water.

When his length nudged my collarbone, Trowa threw back his head and braced himself, his fingers curling into the fitted sheet.  Around his left wrist, he’d wrapped the twisted length of my hair and the vision of him, sprawled and captured, a supplicant, almost made me come.

But no, not yet.

I slid a hand up the inside of his thigh.  He panted.  His hips twitched in these crazy, needy, _hot_ little thrusts.  I grasped him gently at first and then fitted the heel of my hand and my thumb along the underside for a firm massage.

He gasped my name; his thighs parted even further in mindless invitation.

Oh, yes.

“Mmm,” I approved for a third time, and then I swiped my tongue over the exposed head.  Sensitive.  Definitely sensitive.  I’d never heard my name said so many ways: gasped, choked, whined, shuddered, and breathed out.  I had to fight against the instinct to roll my hips against the bed.

I focused on the taste and feel of him.  When I kissed him, he surged upward, hardening even further and, when I licked, he twitched.  I had to keep a grip on him or else I’d never get anywhere, and I had a definite destination in mind.

“Trowa baby,” I whispered, reaching my free hand out to his.  He clutched at me, interlacing our fingers until they were painfully tight.  “I love you,” I reminded him, meeting his lust-darkened gaze, and then I opened my mouth and took him as deep as I could.

It turned out that I could make Trowa scream just like I could make him laugh.

I buried my nose in his curls, tightened my mouth around him, and then began to pull back slowly.

“No-no-Duo-no—” he wheezed brokenly as I released him briefly and licked the salty residue off the tip.

“Bad?” I asked, already brainstorming other ways I could taste him.

The fingers of the hand not clutching mine tightened in the sheets until his knuckles whitened.  “I’ll come if you do that again.”

That sounded good to me.  “The night is young,” I observed and took him deep again.

Even before I’d pulled back all the way, he stopped me with a panted, “There!”  I held still, my tongue pressed against the underside of his length as he thrust into my mouth, rubbing against my palate over and over and then, suddenly, he was coming.  _A lot._

OK, it might seem like giving head was a lot like drinking from a sports bottle or a water fountain or, hell, even eating a popsicle, but it wasn’t.  I tried not to gag and cough when the spurts hit.  The best I could do was hold my breath.  And then he started softening and all the juices in my mouth rushed to escape.  I grabbed the sheet and enlisted it for active duty.

So, it was awkward, and it was messy – “Sorry, baby,” I said as I tried to wipe and dab him dry without snagging his short and curlies – but it had been _amazingly_ hot and I was already thinking about next time.

“Duo,” he beckoned, and I moved up to lie beside him.  My own need was unavoidable – I was throbbing and pulsing with every heartbeat – but it wasn’t like it was gonna kill me.  Actually, it was probably a good idea if I tried to calm down a bit.

Trowa rolled me toward him.  My length mashed sensationally against his belly and his lips covered mine.  I groaned and squirmed mindlessly against him as he sampled my new-and-improved flavor.  “Salty,” he informed me.

I grinned.  “That’s because you are.”

Damned if he didn’t blush.  “You didn’t have to…”

“I’ll never get any better at it if I don’t practice,” I teased.

“Bugger and fuck,” he muttered, closing his eyes.  “If you get any better at it, you’ll kill me.”

“OK.  We’ll work on building up your tolerance for perfect blow jobs.”

He laughed.  And then he looked at me.  I watched his gaze rove down my chest and beyond to where I was trying not to rub against his belly and beg for attention.  When he looked back up and into my eyes again, he smiled.

“Now it’s my turn.”

Oh fuck, it sure was.  And as he’d already come, he wasn’t in the same urgent hurry that I was for relief and release.

“Promise not to torture me,” I demanded even as I let him push me onto my back.  The clay pendant around his neck dangled between us, my name facing out.  I might need the reminder; if anyone could make me forget my own name, it’d be him.

“No torture,” he agreed, and grasped me in his hand at the same moment his lips touched mine.  My groan turned into a full-throated moan when his tongue slid into my mouth.  Oh, hell yes, please sir can I have some more…

I had no shame now – embarrassment had long since hit the road – so when he moved to crouch between my thighs, I wrapped my legs around his waist and rocked up against him, urging him to move things along.

He pulled back from my mouth and panted in my ear, “Slow down, bokkie.  I want to enjoy this.”

“Can we aim for speed over endurance?” I bargained, offering him an inarticulate grunt of please-and-thank-you when he ducked his head down and tugged at my left nipple with his lips.  His hand was still squeezing me tightly and Goddamnit but I wanted to come.  “I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Not this time.”

I wondered if begging would change his mind.  He planted an open-mouthed, sucking kiss on my other nipple and I forgot what I was going to say.

I couldn’t keep still.  My feet kept roving up and down his calves before my ankles momentarily locked at the small of his back, and then it was back to roving again.  I speared my fingers into his short hair before greedily groping down his back and then scratching along the edges of his scars just to feel him shiver.

My only wish was that my hands and feet could have been in ten different places at once because there was no way I’d ever get enough of him.  I was an idiot for not figuring out my problem sooner, for confining us to the sofa and keeping our clothes on.

He was careful not to leave any marks behind as he softly kissed his way up my neck and along my jaw but, contrarily, I kinda wanted him to.

I had no idea how many times I said his name.  It was a lot, anyway, and I could feel him hardening with every passing second (or was it minute? or hour?) and fuck it was such a tease to feel him brush against my thigh.

“You-you’re-h-hard-again,” I gasped out.

“Yah,” he purred against the skin behind my ear.

I reached for him, but he moved back out of range.  Damn it.

“Now-now,” he promised before I could whine.

He was still gripping me, occasionally brushing his thumb over the head, and generally not providing enough stimulation.  “Torture,” I accused between gasps, making him chuckle.

He released me from his grasp and leaned back.  I locked my legs around his waist to keep him from going very far.  I needn’t have worried.  He simply sat back and looked down at me, admiring the very telling shade of magenta that darkened my arousal at the tip.  His hands smoothed over my chest and down my belly, causing me to close my eyes and press my head back into the pillow.

“Trowa…” I prompted him.

“Duo?” he answered, sounding encouragingly breathless.  I wondered if I could make him even more so.  A thought occurred to me and I went with it.

Licking my lips, I rolled my hips invitingly.  I met his gaze and whispered, “Mark me.”

Whoo boy, yes.  He liked that idea a lot.  His hands, just trailing over my thighs, paused.  His fingers clenched, digging into my muscles and making me groan at the strength of his grasp.  He didn’t even try to deny that he wanted it, too.

“Where?” he panted, eying me hungrily.

I reached for his hand and brought it up to the top of my thigh, and then turned its path inward as I let my leg fall open.  “Here,” I told him, pressing his fingers to the smooth skin about four inches down from my crotch.

“Ahh, Duo…” he groaned, massaging the spot until I was thrusting into the air.  “Right here?” he checked.

I nodded.  “Make it dark so I feel it all day tomorrow.”

He closed his eyes, panting.  The hand still gripping my leg reaffirmed its grasp.  I watched as his already heavy erection bobbed in approval, darkening even further to a shade that nearly matched mine.  “You don’t have to… for me,” he seemed to force himself to say.  Hah.  Resistance was futile.

“I’m not.  It’s for me.  I wanna remember, over and over, how my incredible, amazing, sexy boyfriend rocked my world.”  I paused before adding, “You _are_ gonna rock my world, aren’t you?”

He softly moaned an agreement, lowering himself between my knees.  Oh Christ, watching him settle between my legs – feeling his bare shoulders bump and brush against my thighs as he kissed his way up to the place I’d chosen – was almost enough to bring me off.  I shuddered when his long bangs brushed the underside of my length, and then his mouth was opening and sealing tightly over my skin.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows so I could watch him.  His lashes fluttered briefly as he took a deep breath in through his nose.  He looked up at me through his brows, and then he started to suck.

Oh fuck it hurt _so_ good.  I tried not to thrust my hips and dislodge him before he was through, but ugh…!  It was all I could do not to beg-scream-throw-a-freakin’-temper-tantrum I wanted him so bad.  I wanted to come.  _Let me come, Trowa._ Yes, so, so hot.  More! _Let me come, baby—!_

I was panting and gasping when he released me.  “Don’t make me wait anymore,” I rasped, my eyes squeezed shut as I was suddenly overwhelmed by the painful erection he hadn’t addressed properly yet.

There was no warning before he licked me from base to tip.  I gritted my teeth and braced myself against the torment of it.  My heart was pounding and my hips started pistoning in time with the beat, anticipating the slick heat of his mouth, but— _Careful!_   I fisted my hands in the sheets, struggling for control.

“Duo,” he called and I knew what he wanted.  He wanted me to open my eyes, to look at him, to _see_ him.

I did.  “Tro… baby?”

He met my slightly unfocused gaze and nuzzled his cheek against my appreciative length.  “I’m yours.  Absolutely.  Body, heart, soul.”  Before I could cobble together a response in acknowledgement of that astounding declaration, he fitted his lips over me and moved down – _hot-tight-soft-wet-more-yes-please!_ – until I felt the head hit the roof of his mouth and rub against his soft palate and suddenly I understood why he’d insisted that it be _there,_ just like _that_ because holy-fuck-wow-damn-yes!

And then he began to pull back.  Slowly.  With suction.  Interestingly enough, Trowa could make me scream, too.  Well, it was only fair, really.

I had no idea how long I lasted.  Time lost all meaning.  I was dimly aware of reaching for his shoulders, of sliding a hand up and into his hair, of babbling and thrusting with as much restraint as I could manage, of warning him when it was time—!

Like me, he didn’t pull back.  I came in his mouth… and came… and _came._   And I didn’t give a damn that I was suddenly softening and everything was all wet and gooey.  Oh my God.  I was dead.  What did a little drool and spunk matter to me now?

He used a dry corner of the sheet to wipe up.  I wanted to help.  I really did.  But I was dead.

I marveled as he crawled up my body, crouching over me.  Where the hell had he gotten the energy to do that?  It was all I could do to breathe and moan when he kissed me.  It took a monumental effort to get my arms to move so I could rest my nerveless palms and numb fingers on his forearms.  His mouth was warm and his lips a little sticky and I knew why.

“Musky,” I croaked when he leaned back.

He smirked.  “Savory.”

I tried to lift my head to check, but I couldn’t manage it.  “Did you come again?”

Slowly, he shook his head.  I groaned.  Oh, how I wanted to help him with that.

He reached an arm across my chest and pressed his cheek over my heart, nuzzling against me.  “Just let me feel you,” he murmured.  “Like this.”  He demonstrated by rocking himself against my hip.

I lifted a noodle-esque limb and grasped the arm banded over me.  “Anything you want,” I vowed and relished the sensation of his hot breath against my skin when he thrust again.  He managed four or five repeats of that sexy squirming of his before I discovered a small but welcome reserve of energy.  I was still soft, but that didn’t matter.

I rolled towards him, sliding and arm beneath his head to cradle it in the crook of my elbow and then pressing him onto his back as I ran my other hand down his chest to grasp him.  He moaned into my mouth as I kissed him slowly.  His hand slid up my back and his nails scratched at my skin.  He rocked his hips and I gripped him tightly, countering his movements until he pulled his mouth free of mine, snapping his hips faster and faster.

I kissed his chest, tasting the fine misting of sweat that had dewed upon his firming muscles and peaked nipples.  He was so.  Incredibly.  Hot.  I desperately ached to be hard again, but after coming like I had, I was completely spent.  In the next instant, so was he.

Holding him as he came was unbelievable.  Hell, I think I liked it even better than bringing him off with my mouth or vice versa.  _Next time,_ I promised myself, draping myself over him and just listening to him breathe.  I pressed my ear to his chest and counted his heartbeats as they gradually slowed.  I rubbed my cheek against his skin and smiled as I inhaled his scent.  Eventually, he shifted and I knew I had to do something about the cooling mess on my fingers and his groin.

Thank God sheets come with more than two corners is all I’m saying.

We dozed after that.  I must have slept a little because, when I blinked and stretched, I discovered that I was currently being spooned by Trowa and he was carefully rewrapping my hair around his wrist.

“You awake?” he breathed.

“Yeah,” I mouthed back in near-silence.  I had no idea what time it was.  Dinner time, according to my severely empty and hella peeved stomach.  I fought it into submission.  It’d get fed when I damn well felt like getting up.  At the moment, I was basking in the novelty of a completely bare Trowa pressed up against me.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything.  He didn’t move away or shift closer or release my hair.  I was about to ante up my penny in exchange for his thoughts when he finally propped himself up on his elbow and then trailed his fingertips down my arm and back up again.  I shivered, remembering how he’d used this gesture in Egypt to wake me up for kiss after kiss.

“What changed?” he asked.  “Why did you decide to tell me today…?”

I grinned crookedly and squiggled around so I could see his expression.  “You think we shoulda waited longer?” I teased.  “Are you telling me I killed the mystery?”

He snorted.  “No, goof.  If you were any more mystery, we wouldn’t speak the same language.”

I remembered our cupboard debate, the china-maat-kerel deal, and the unforgettable _befokken lekker._  I chuckled.  Sometimes, we didn’t speak the same language at all.

He didn’t say anything else, just continued drawing invisible lines up and down my arm as he waited for me to answer his original question.  I took a deep breath and sighed, trying to sort out my thoughts, attempting to boil my motivations down to something I could say that would make sense.

“I wanted you to come to the States and live with me,” I began, “because I… well, because I’m a selfish ass, mostly.  I missed you and I wanted you, but I wanted you to have a shot at the kind of life you deserved, too, something… different, better, I dunno.”  I shrugged, hating how badly I was sucking at explaining this.  Lifting a hand, I brushed my fingertips over his machete scar.

He leaned a fraction of an inch closer and waited for me to answer his question.

I took a deep breath.  When I thought I might possibly be capable of semi-coherence, I continued, “And today I… you…  You deserve someone who isn’t afraid to have people know that he’s your boyfriend.”  I swallowed and cleared my throat.  “Until yesterday, I wasn’t that person.  Now I am.”

His expression blanked with surprise.  I guess he hadn’t been expecting me to say that.  On my arm, his hand stopped moving and his fingers curled around my bicep; I suspected it wasn’t so much to hold me down, but to ground himself.  “You would…”  His lips slackened and his eyes shined with moisture.  He had to stop and start over again.  “You would tell people that I’m your kerel?”

“Trowa,” I whispered back, “I’d tell them you’re my soulmate.”  In retrospect, “boyfriend” seemed like such a trite term now, given what we’d just done and how he’d made me feel.  That had not been anywhere near the same category as fumbling around on the sofa with our hands down each other’s pants.  What we’d just done had been more.  A helluvalot more.  It boggled my mind that we were only just getting started down this road.

When he ducked his head down, I couldn’t see anything through his bangs.  I felt his lips press against my shoulder and then a warm droplet splashed onto my skin, cooling quickly.  I reached for him, dislodging his grip on my arm so I could reach up and grasp his shoulder from behind.  His hand fisted on top of my chest, my hair still wrapped messily around his forearm.

“Hey,” I whispered.  “You OK?”

He nodded.  He drew in a deep breath.  After an additional moment, he reached up blindly until he was cradling my face.  Only then did he lift his head.  I studied his shining eyes and dark lashes – now clumped with tears – and I was in awe.  “You are amazing,” I told him.  His Adam’s apple bobbed in response.  I smiled.  “And I am so glad that I don’t have to miss you anymore.”

I suspected that he kissed me just so I’d shut up.  But that was OK.  I’d be mushy and sappy during some other afterglow.  I needed to pace myself.  Besides, if I kept on like this, I was probably gonna be embarrassed later.  Yeah, Trowa was just doing what he did best: look out for me.

He kissed me with lips and tongue, gentle and shallow, warm and slow.  Being with him like this made the world disappear.  It made time stop.  He was a miracle, my own personal miracle.

When he leaned away, he carefully rearranged himself so he was lying on my chest, not too heavy but wonderfully warm.  “You don’t have to tell anyone about us,” he said.

I blinked.  “Huh?”

He smiled.  “What we have is ours.  I don’t need more than that.”

I reached up and combed his bangs away from his face.  “No declarations of undying love in front of your troupe and everyone at my school?  No class rings?  No matching tattoos?”

He shook his head.

“Hm, so I guess I can cancel that sky writing I was gonna have done at the World Series?”  I gestured above us in a wide arc as I narrated, “Duo loves Trowa forever and ever and—”

He pressed a single finger to my lips and chuckled.  “Cancel it.  We can’t see it from here anyway.”

I grinned.  “And you think we’re gonna be spending a lotta time right here?” I teased, wiggling against the mattress.

“There’s more room to maneuver than on the sofa,” he teased back.

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “You got that right, partner.”

He smiled again.  Damn but I was never gonna get enough of seeing him smile, hearing him laugh, feeling his fingers thread between mine like they were doing now.  I clasped his hand tightly, feeling like the luckiest guy on the whole damn planet.  Trowa and I were a team.  We were partners, _lovers,_ and there wasn’t anything – driving tests, GEDs, swim championships, corporate powwows, and fist fights in parking lots included – that we couldn’t handle together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Futzy) Fanart of Trowa's scars and Duo tweaking his back pocket: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/41728.html
> 
> And a BIG Thank You goes out to YokoT of fanfiction.net for the correct French! (^_^)
> 
> Is this the end of the fallout from Lord Maxwell’s death? No. Duo still hasn’t really acknowledged his loss yet even though he’s accepting some of his responsibilities with regards to the company and providing a home for himself and Trowa. There will be more fallout in the upcoming episode – “Prom Night” – plus the lead-in to more action.


	11. Prom Night, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> South African English: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Trowa POV
> 
> Theme music: "All We Are" by OneRepublic

“He’s so in love with you it makes me want to slap him,” Dorothy announced.

Despite her claim toward violent tendencies, she didn’t manage to pull my attention away from Duo’s approaching form.  I doubted I had to inform her that klapping my kerel would invite retribution from me, so I said nothing. 

In any event, it was a moot point: she was smiling fondly in Duo’s direction.  Or perhaps she was smiling at her girlfriend who was clutching Duo’s arm as she slipped and skidded over the ice-coated asphalt, hooting and shrieking while Duo rolled his eyes at her antics.  Duo didn’t have a problem navigating the terrain, perhaps because he’d made a better choice in footwear.  Or perhaps because he was naturally extremely agile.

That was something to be investigated later.  Anticipation made my fingertips tingle inside my insulated gloves.

“OK, Schbeiker,” Duo began, conspicuously aware of my presence as evidenced by the fact that he neither looked in my direction nor greeted me verbally.  I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.  He continued loudly, “I’ve delivered you to your other half.  Now gimme my clothes back.”

_What?_

Hilde reached a gloved hand up to her throat just as Duo’s gaze fell, zeroing in on the exact same vicinity.

He sighed mournfully.  “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Um, I think I did.  Sorry?”

“Yeah, you will be,” he mumbled.  His eyes focused on me for the briefest moment and the heat I saw there was enough to make me forget about the breath-pluming chill.  “Sorry, Tro.  I gotta deal with muffler retrieval before it ends up in the school’s lost-and-found box with all the used and abandoned jockstraps.”

The mental image of such a thing was more than enough to jar me from my contemplation of his kissable lips.  I blinked.  Smothering both a grin and a wince, I nodded toward the school entrance over his shoulder.  “Get going.”

He gave me a salute, glared briefly at a slightly blushing Hilde and smirking Dorothy, and then jogged back toward the building.  I watched as he dodged and wove his way through the crowd against the tide.  Oh, yes.  He was agile like a springbok.  An investigation was _definitely_ called for.

After the end of his braid disappeared through the doors, I turned my attention to the rest of the car park.  Hilde and Dorothy were whispering to each other and I didn’t try to interrupt them.  I leaned an elbow against the roof of the car and tapped my gloved fingers on the metal, waiting with barely restrained patience, wondering if I’d overhear anything useful in the process of looking distracted.  When a motion at the corner of my vision caught my attention, I didn’t resist the inclination to examine its cause.

It was the blond boy from the swim team, the oke who had taken not one but three swings at Duo on Sunday.  I watched as he stomped past on the way to his car.  He did not look up and answer my silent glare.  Duo had promised that he’d handle the situation and I trusted him to do that.  If he needed me to donner some kak-spouting boykie for him, he’d ask.  In the meantime, I had my own work to bother with.

Dorothy suddenly remarked very audibly, “Did you notice that Duo was practically glowing today?  It was sickening.”  She didn’t look all that disgusted or put-off.  In fact, she slid an arm around Hilde’s waist.

Hilde leaned her head against Dorothy’s and sighed happily.  “You know, I thought it couldn’t get any worse back when he was texting this mysterious stranger every day for hours at a time, wandering around with that silly grin on his face, never paying attention to a word anyone said, constantly checking his messages during class…”

Hilde shared a grin with her girlfriend as the pair of them sneakily skinnered behind Duo’s back.  I didn’t want to hear about Duo’s life before I’d come to the States; that was Duo’s past to tell.  As Hilde and Dorothy seemed to be waiting for some sort of reaction from me, I didn’t give them one.  They both seemed like nice girls, but they were venturing into territory where they were not welcome.  What was between Duo and me stayed between Duo and me.

With the blond oke out of sight, I scanned the area for that other boykie, the one who’d schemed up the brilliant idea of trying to block me in the car so I couldn’t skop his arse.  I almost smirked, remembering how he’d ended up in the snow.  I suspected I’d broken his nose, but it’d be nice to see it with my own eyes.  That was about the only reason I hadn’t long since nodded a polite farewell to Hilde and Dorothy.  It wasn’t as if I was standing out here in the cold because it was good for my health.  February in New York was bloody miserable.  I no longer had even a twinge of feeling left in my face.

“It can always get worse,” Dorothy contributed sagely and I wondered if she’d just read my mind.  But no, she was still talking about Duo.

“Oh, so true,” Hilde concurred and then turned toward me.

I kept the school doors in sight, tucked into the corner of my eye, as she smiled up at me.  I did not trust that smile.  She and Dorothy were completely unlike the girls and women I’d encountered briefly in my life but, in all fairness, Duo had warned me about them.

“Hilde and Dorothy are totally and irredeemably evil.  Like, evil mastermind kind of evil.”

“Yet they’re your friends?” I’d replied, baffled by his genuine smile.

He’d shrugged.  “Hilde and I have known each other since kindergarten.  Dorothy’s part of the package deal.”

In other words: twice the unanticipated female scheming for the price of one.  Bloody wonderful.

“Hey, Trowa…” Hilde began in a tone that instantly put me on my guard.  If she thought that a shared scheme and a two-hour trek in a car to the New York State High School Swim Championships guaranteed my cooperation with whatever was making her smile like that, then she could bloody well think again.

I kept my expression impassive.  “Ja?”

“Duo wasn’t mad at you for the swim meet thing last weekend, was he?”

“No.”

“Oh, good!  There’s hope for that boy yet.”

I didn’t want to ask, but if I didn’t they’d undoubtedly attempt to blindside me later.   Best to just meet it head on.  “Hope for what?”

“Well…” she drawled, rocking back and forth in her fashionable yet useless snow boots, “see, there’s something else we think he should include you in.”

Dorothy corrected her: “I don’t think he _should,_ per se.  I just want to see it happen.”

Hilde rolled her eyes and pulled a gloved hand from her coat pocket.  She held out a larny, dark blue envelope with silver calligraphy in my direction.

I blinked, making no move to take it.

I couldn’t deny that Hilde and Dorothy had assisted me with the handling of Duo’s swim meet.  They’d warned me that Duo would want to go alone.  I would have spent more than one night lying awake scheming how to keep him in my sights while indulging him, and I probably would have ended up in a scrap with him over it after concluding that it was just not on, but Hilde had bounced back with the perfect solution.

“Let him think he’s going alone and ride with us.”

I’d glanced at Dorothy.  She’d smiled.  “I’ll drive.”

“Perfect,” I’d agreed.  And things had turned out even more so when Duo had declared his intention to give one of his teammates a ride.  With a witness in the car, it had been far less likely that Khushrenada would show his hand.

No, I hadn’t forgotten about the greedy, unscrupulous bastard, although I often wondered if Duo had.  We all have our limits and I wasn’t about to begrudge Duo his.  While he dealt with Maxwell Limited, I dealt with the rest of it insofar as I could.  I didn’t really believe that Khushrenada would be so careless as to abduct Duo on U.S. soil.  No, he’d find ways to goad him into taking up his mother’s quest and avenging his father’s death.  He’d use Duo to lead him to the second half of that fokken key and Duo was in no position to do that at the moment.  He had far too many immediate responsibilities to see to.  Thank God.  So long as Duo didn’t play Khushrenada’s game, he was safe enough: he was potentially useful.  And the day Duo retrieved that bloody artifact would be his last day of usefulness to a man like Treize Khushrenada.

So, ja, I worried and I watched and I waited.  I took photos whenever Duo and I went out on the weekends and sent them off to the captain in my regular email reports.  He always spotted the watchful shadows that trailed Duo and me through the shopping center or whatever place of interest we were reconnoitering.  I didn’t doubt that I was paranoid, but I had every right to be.

I had no idea how long Khushrenada had been waiting for Lord Maxwell to make his move, but the man clearly possessed some measure of patience.  Unfortunately, he was far more opportunistic: he’d had a chance in Laos to get away with abduction and torture and he’d taken it.  Perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so bold here where it was more difficult and expensive to buy the cooperation of the authorities, but I knew he was planning something.  It was his move next and it chafed that I didn’t have the resources to counter him.  Unless I brought the whole Barton Troupe to the States.  But it was best to keep them in reserve for when I really needed them, and I was sure I would, eventually.  Khushrenada wasn’t about to give up.  Hence my reluctance to let Duo head off to his state swim meet without backup or witnesses.

But for all the forethought I’d put into the operation, I hadn’t anticipated the pure satisfaction of seeing the look on Duo’s face when I’d finally revealed my presence after all had been said and done and he’d been standing on the makeshift stage in his windbreaker and tracksuit with a first-place medal being hung around his neck.

I’d never felt as proud of him as I had then.  The kidnapping, the rescue attempt, the accident, the press conference, the lies, the funeral, the company presidency… Duo had made it through all of that and still kept his focus.  He hadn’t fallen apart; he’d triumphed.  Although it was only a high school swim race, it represented so much more.  It was the manifestation of his strength and determination.  And, when he’d looked up in response to my shrill whistle and seen me, that moment had become _ours._

Hilde and Dorothy had helped make that possible, and I would be forever grateful, but now it sounded like these two were soeking with us.

“What is it?” I reluctantly asked when it became clear that Hilde would rather give herself a muscle cramp than lower her arm in defeat.

Dorothy explained airily, “Two tickets to this year’s prom.  April 20th.”

“They’re made out to ‘Dominic Maxwell and guest’ because we can’t get the name of someone from a different school put on them.  Sorry.”

The relationship people in this country had with their schools was bizarre.  I certainly didn’t feel that homey connection with the GED preparatory institution in which I’d enrolled.  Sitting on my arse from nine a.m. to two thirty-five p.m. every day did nothing to earn my allegiance.  And yet people here wore their school emblems with pride and dignity, even arrogance.  I would have likened it to my loyalty to the Barton Troupe, but we were a unit, dependent on each other for our lives and livelihoods.  The sense I’d gotten from Duo was that he didn’t rely on his classmates so much as _compete_ against them and, given the events of last Sunday, he was even despised by a few.  And yet everyone clung to their school identity with fanatical devotion.  Befok.

Nor did I understand the significance of the event Hilde seemed intent on having Duo attend.

“Prom,” I echoed.  “That’s a dance.”

“A formal dance,” Hilde confirmed.  “So you’ll both need tuxes.”

“And there’s a dinner beforehand,” Dorothy mentioned.  “It should be decent, given the venue this year.”

I shook my head.  “Duo is never going to agree to this.”

“He might if _you_ asked him,” Hilde argued with a dangerously charming smile.  “Please, Trowa?  He didn’t go last year and he turned down all the invitations he got to the other ones.  This is his last chance.”

As far as I was concerned, it was Duo right to decline.  Why was it so befokken important that he go?

“It’s our coming-of-age,” Dorothy summarized, once again with eerily accurate timing.

I glared thoughtfully at her and then at Hilde as I tried to suss out their motives for interfering this time.  Out of the corner of my eye, a figure matching Duo’s height and lithe shape pushed open the front doors.  Muffler reclaimed and snuggly donned, Duo moved with his signature, loping grace, leaping down the steps and heading in our direction.  Hilde had seconds to convince me to go along with this new scheme.

“Don’t you want to see him dance?” she finagled.

I did, but—

“It’s worth wearing nylons just for that,” Dorothy agreed with relish.

—I’d rather not deal with lecherous onlookers.

“Just take them,” Hilde urged.  “Think about it.”

I didn’t move.

“Duo’s on his way,” Dorothy contributed.

“I know,” I said, looking away from Hilde and the still-offered tickets to give Duo’s progress my full attention.  When a car pulled out and idly rolled by, blocking Duo’s path and forcing him to stop and wait, I felt Hilde slide the envelope into the pocket of my winter coat.  I tensed.

“Hey!  You pinch his ass; you answer to me, Schbeiker!” Duo called.  A few heads swiveled in his direction.

I bit back a chuckle.  “No arse pinching,” I reported.  In fact, there’d been no pinching of any kind.  Rather, instead of a theft, I’d been left an unsolicited gift.

Duo’s eyes sparkled at me, promising naughty things.  “Well, that’s a relief.”  He transferred his gaze to Hilde; it went from warm and open to sharp-edged and suspicious in an instant.  “Just what are you up to, woman?”

She rolled with the verbal punch.  “Well, at the moment, I’m wondering what it takes to get this one—”  She nodded in my direction.  “—to crack a smile.”

Leaning on the roof of the car from the passenger’s side, Duo drawled, “Well, actually, it only happens when there’s a precise alignment of the planet Neptune with the constellation Leo as the barometric pressure is rising, but it helps if you stick your tongue in his ear and blow.”

I barked out a laugh.  Which was precisely what Duo had been going for, the goof.  He grinned at me over the roof of the car and either I was becoming genuinely hypothermic or a mere look really had the power to heat blood.

Dorothy looked intrigued.

Hilde looked offended.  “Duo!”

“What?”

“Ew,” she declared.  “That was squicky.”

Duo shrugged.  “Hey, be thankful I spared you the details about the melted peanut butter and the feather duster.”

I snorted.

Before Hilde could prolong the conversation and Dorothy could encourage Duo to elaborate, he announced, “OK, muffler has been rescued.  Let’s burn rubber already.  I’m freezing my balls off.”

“And just what would Trowa do with you if _that_ happened?” Dorothy murmured silkily.

I sent a sidelong glare at her, all traces of humor wiped from my expression.

Duo’s grin didn’t even wobble.  “There’s a pretty good chance he’d give me a shoulder to cry on after the guys in black suits showed up to take away my Man Card.”

“Let’s not test the theory,” I interjected, opening the car door and signaling our imminent departure.  I had a vested interest in making sure nothing of Duo’s got frozen or fell off, especially now, the day after he’d decided he was ready to be my lover.

 _My lover._   All day I’d been rolling the words over and over in my mind, savoring them as I remembered the mark I’d given him on his inner thigh and wondered if it was accomplishing its purpose.  I nodded farewell and ignored Hilde’s significant look.  Duo waved goodbye to his friends.  We got in the car where the heater was rattling and wheezing.  At least it was warm.

Duo buckled up and I pulled out, joining the queue along with the dozens of other vehicles that were in the process of departing the school’s car park.  As we idled in line, Duo cleared his throat and asked, “So, what did Hilde wanna talk to you about?”

“What?”

“Oh, come on.  It was obvious that she wanted to get you alone for five minutes.”

“What makes you say that?” I inquired, wondering exactly how astute Duo was.  He hadn’t mentioned noticing the people following us so I didn’t think he had.  I was both relieved that he wasn’t worrying about it and frustrated that he wasn’t as sensitive to their presence as I was.

And, to be perfectly honest, I had more than a passing interest in the subtle art of manipulation.  Thomas Darlian’s use of it in Vientiane had piqued my curiosity.

Duo grinned at me.  “She never asks to borrow my muffler.  Dorothy would kill her if she lost or stopped wearing the one that she made in home ec, sophomore year.  I’m pretty sure it was Dorothy’s Valentine’s gift to Hilde.”

I coughed out a laugh.  “Dorothy knitted a muffler?”  That was hard to imagine.

“Hm,” Duo agreed.  “No one’s come forward as a witness, but that’s what she says.  Personally, I think she just blackmailed one of the freshmen into doing it for her.”

Now _that_ I could believe.

“So, back to this chat you had with Hilde…”

Dear God but he was relentless.  “A _chat_ implies that both people participated equally in an exchange of information.”

“Uh huh.  So what did she want to talk _at_ you about?”

“Nonsense,” I hedged.  Duo was in a fantastic mood and I was eager to capitalize on this.  Today was Tuesday, but he’d finished with the swim season on Sunday and I didn’t have a tutoring session with Sally until Friday.   _Also,_ neither one of us was expected at Maxwell Limited this afternoon.  Duo was all mine until 7:30 a.m. tomorrow morning when we’d have to leave for another day of school.  I had sixteen uninterrupted hours with my lover.

 _My lover._   I gripped the steering wheel harder as arousal rolled through me.

“I bet I know what you’re thinking,” Duo drawled softly.

I glanced over at him and then down at his lap.  He’d propped his elbow up against the door and his hand was resting high on his thigh.  His middle finger tapped against the very spot I’d marked the night before.  I looked back up into his eyes.  “Did it help you remember?”

“As if I needed it to.”

That purr of his worked better than the heater at warming me up.  My blood was just shy of boiling by the time I turned the car onto the street.

“Tell me you don’t have to finish any homework tonight,” I said when we stopped at a robot.

Duo wiggled a bit in his seat, tugging surreptitiously at his trousers in a bid for comfort.  I doubted it helped much.  I could see the outline of his arousal.  My mouth watered.  I swallowed thickly.

“Nope.  No homework on the radar tonight.”

“What is on the radar?” I tormented myself by asking.

He rolled his head toward me and smiled slowly.  “You.”

Ah God.  I didn’t think I could wait until we got back home.

“The light’s green,” he observed in that same sexy murmur and it took me a minute to sort out the words from his tone.

I pulled into the intersection before anyone was moved to hoot at me.  The rest of the journey home was made in silence.  If Duo minded, he didn’t let on.  Whenever I glanced his way, he was looking out the window, a barely-there smile curving his lips.  Anticipation drove the car and impatience parked it.  After a painfully long and drawn out ride in the lift and a too slow journey down the hall, I held the door open for Duo, my breath catching when he brushed his shoulder against my chest in passing.

I barely gave him enough time to kick his snow boots off before I was kissing him and crowding him toward the bedroom.  He tossed his gloves aside and then his hands were unzipping my jacket and sliding beneath my sweater.  Oh God, I wanted him.

It seemed like, between one breath and the next, our clothes vanished and he was on his back on the rumpled bed.  I slid my bare arms beneath his equally bare thighs and then I was swallowing him down, greedily taking his length deeper than I had the night before, determined to put off my gag reflex as long as possible and thrilled when I made noticeable progress.  I moaned around him, inhaling deeply.  The scent of him turned my mind to pap and all I cared about was the fact that he was groaning, calling out, shouting—

“Wait!  Wait-wait-wait, Trowa, wait!”

When his words registered, I reluctantly sucked my way off of him, laving the sticky tip with my tongue.  “Hm?” I asked.

When his inarticulate moan faded into panting breaths, he rasped, “Not like that.  C’mere.”

I crawled up his body, kissing and nuzzling as I moved until he’d squirmed his way into my arms and I was leaning over him as I had during our first time together.  A dollop of lotion found its way into my palm and then Duo was curling my fingers around him.

“Like this?” I murmured, watching him shudder and thrust.

“Oh, yeah,” he approved, rocking his hips up into my tight grasp.  His own lotion-slickened hand found me and I clamored on top of him.  With one hand cradling the back of his head and my elbow keeping most of my weight off of his chest, we rocked together in each other’s grasp.  His legs wrapped around my hips and my own name became synonymous with “more” and “yes” and “please.”

Oh God, I loved how he said my name.  It sounded like the French word it had been drawn from, but rich and creamy and savoy.  As if the syllables had melted in his mouth.  I rewarded him for each utterance: sucking his earlobe or rubbing my cheek over his chest or dipping my tongue into his hot mouth.  God, he was lekker.

It took longer this way – or, at least, that was how it seemed – but our gazes locked time and time again, heightening the intensity and charging the air between us.  Every nuance of his pleasure was expressed openly for me to see.  I moved with him, watching his want and his need, my mind empty of all else.  And when he came I felt it with my entire being: his muscles firmed beneath his smooth, flawless skin; a very fine sheen of sweat blossomed from neck to navel; his breathing turned so shallow he was nearly holding his breath; his hips pumped faster and his eyes unfocused.  I watched him come, heard him gasp my name, felt his free hand clutch my hip even as his other tightened around me.  All of it conspired to push me over the edge as well.

As I shuddered and panted against his shoulder, I silently thanked him.  I’d had every intention of bringing him off with my mouth but, if I had, I would have missed feeling his pleasure overtake him.  I would have missed the gift of his gaze locked with mine as we’d moved together.  Even though I’d planned to make love to him, Duo had made love to _me._   Not so much with his body, but with his voice, thick with passion, and his eyes, unwavering in their focus.  He was extraordinary.

I kissed a meandering path over his neck and shoulder.  Between our slick and soon-to-be-sticky bellies, he reached for my hand, interlacing our fingers in a messy grip.  The fingertips of his other hand roved up and down my spine, dancing.

“Hmm,” I informed him, arching into the teasing touches.

“Wow,” he complimented and I chuckled.  I’d liked it, too.

“So, I’m gonna go out on another limb here—” he began and I mumbled playfully, “In the middle of winter?”

He snorted softly and continued, “And I’m gonna guess that you missed me today.”

By way of answer, I caught his lips with mine and kissed him thoroughly.  I watched his eyelids slide shut and I felt a new wave of heat crest through me when his tongue slid against mine.  God, he was so open and warm and lush.  He was like the very water he’d become a master of last Sunday, a whirlpool swirling around me, drowning me.  I groaned; Duo had already promised never to ask me to leave him, but sucking me into his soul and never letting me go would be even better.

“Was that supposed to be an answer?” he teased when I let him have use of his mouth.  “Or the equivalent of an after-dinner mint?”

I growled.  “It was that thing they do between courses.”  I’d seen a couple of larny dinners in the films we’d watched thus far.  That seemed like a fair comparison.

“Clearing the dishes?” he quipped.

“Uh-hm,” I answered, licking his earlobe.

He fidgeted.  “We’re still covered in leftovers.”

I’d noticed, but I still didn’t give rocks about clean-up.

“And you haven’t answered my question.”

“Which was?” I mumbled against his neck.

He slid out from under my mouth and captured my jaw with his free hand.  “Did you miss me?”

“Ja, mos ja,” I breathed, and pulled back so I could smooth the palm of my dry hand over the mark on the inside of his thigh.  “Did you miss me back?”

He grinned.  “Nope.”

“Pardon?” I coughed, my brows arching upward.

“I missed a helluvalot more than just your _back,_ baby.”

“Ah.”  I smirked.  “That’s all right, then.”

“Love your priorities, man,” he informed me, smirking in return.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, because it means you’re probably not gonna tweak when I tell you I totally spaced on grabbing the box of Kleenex on our way in here.”

I snorted.  “Was there a box out there?”  I hadn’t noticed.

He stretched an arm over the edge of the bed and groped blindly for something on the floor.  “A question—for the ages,” he agreed, wincing as he searched.  I was about to offer to help when he came up with his undershirt clutched in his fist and crowed with delight.  “Ah-hah!  Towel substitute acquired.”

I was still smiling when we finished clearing away the evidence.  No longer in danger of soiling the sheets we’d just put down the night before, I sat up and ran my hands along the inside of his still-spread thighs.  He grinned up at me, making no move to cover himself.  Oh, yes.  When Duo gives himself, he gives his all.

“What?” he prodded me, jerking his chin in the direction of the hungry smile I could feel clenching my jaw together and pulling my lips wide.

I dragged my fingers over his softened length and brushed my thumb back and forth against his sac.  “What I wouldn’t give for an encore,” I confessed.  I wasn’t hard, but I wanted to be.  I wasn’t done with him yet.

He gave me a slightly twisted grin.  “It’s not even four-thirty.  Unless you’ve got a hot date tonight, I’d say an encore is a definite possibility.”

“Oh,” I answered, feigning disappointment, “but I do have a hot date.”

He tried to glare at me, but he could already see where I was going with this.  “Anyone I know?”

“Ja,” I whispered, tracing the edge of his bruise with my thumb.  And before he could ask the question simmering in the depths of his dark eyes, I added, “And he’s very hot.”

“Say lekker,” he ordered, grinning.

“Lekker,” I obliged.  “Befokken lekker.”  The skin on his forearms pebbled into gooseflesh, so I said it again.  “My lekker kerel,” I told him, speaking low and soft as I drew a palm down the center of his chest, “I smaak you stukkend.”

“That sounds painful,” he observed, but he didn’t even pretend to be worried.

“It isn’t.”  I leaned over him, covering him with my body again, and nudged against his lips until he opened his mouth and kissed me, invited me in, rocked his hips against mine, and rekindled the heat between us.  I didn’t object when Duo shoved at my chest and rolled me off of him.  He pinned me to the mattress and I encircled his hips with my legs: I didn’t care what he did so long as he did it with me.

I was tempted to unravel his braid, but his hand, once-again coated with lotion, encircled my firming length and gave a slow, steady pull, erasing every thought from my mind.

I was right about Duo being a bloody good dancer.  “Lekker swaai,” I informed him as he thrust against me, aligning our hardening lengths.  I watched his hips move in tight circles, rubbing our sacs together in teasing motions that heightened my arousal but offered no relief.  The play of his muscles beneath his skin mesmerized me until I was nothing but a collection of hot blood and tingling skin held together by need.

He strung me along like my pleasure was his.  Kisses and caresses, a strong grip and a teasing touch: Duo investigated my reactions to all of it.  Through it all, though, his gaze was locked with mine.  It was a touch in and of itself.

When I finally felt the pull of completion hauling me toward release, Duo’s hot mouth was panting breaths against my chest and his hands were on my hips, guiding my thrusts as he surged between my thighs, his length rushing and rubbing against mine, slick and hard.  I grasped his shoulders, his braid wound around my wrist, and gave in.  I didn’t even have the breath to warn him.

He gasped when the heat washed over both of us and then he groaned.  “So fucking hot,” he nearly whined, pressing his mouth to my neck.

“Come for me, bokkie,” I murmured, rubbing my cheek against the flyaway strands of hair concealing his ear from me.

“Yes…” he agreed, thrusting faster against my belly and its renewed slickness.  I wrapped my legs around his waist and held him tight until he braced himself up on his elbows and, gasping, met my gaze as his release pulsed out between us.

“We made another mess,” he informed me between heaving breaths, clearly done in.

I chuckled.

“And I think your hot date is outta gas.”

I lowered my feet to the mattress and ran my hands down his back until I was massaging his arse.

“Oh, fuck,” he remarked, rocking into my grasp.  “Yeah.  Completely outta gas.  Not even fumes left.  Otherwise you would totally be firing up my rockets right now.”

“Could be a delayed reaction,” I teased.

“Hah!  Yeah, come back later when my batteries are recharged.”

We sacrificed a pillowcase to clean-up and then Duo claimed the shower.  “There’s room for two if you _don’t_ behave yourself,” he invited.

I accepted.

“Oooh, yes.  Body soap,” he mumbled between sucking in a breath and biting his lower lip.  “Best thing ever.”

I had to agree.  It was very, very nice replicating that slippery lotion feeling _everywhere_ our bodies came into contact.  The hot water and the steam were secondary.  All I cared about was the way my arms slid over his torso and his hips rocked into mine.  If not for the soap bubbles on his neck I probably would have marked him again.

“Jesus.  Christ.  Fuck.  Trowa,” he said, each word a sentence unto itself.

I would have laughed if not for the image of _Duo_ thrusting inside me.  “It has to be you,” I mumbled.

“Me?” he repeated, clearly confused.

I explained: “You.  Fucking me.”

“Oooh, hell yes,” he groaned.   When his soapy hands slid down to my arse and his sudsy fingers dipped between the cheeks, I wholeheartedly encouraged him.  “This OK?” he checked as I felt him rub hesitantly against the puckered skin he’d discovered.

I shouted.  I panted and whined.  I pulled him closer.  I rocked against him harder.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

It was most definitely a yes.

Neither he nor I got truly hard this time, but our cocks were full and heavy and I wasn’t even sure if I came, per se.  I only felt a shimmering wave of heat and then, suddenly, my strength was gone.  The shower wall held me upright and breathing became my number one priority.

“Duo?” I wheezed, wondering if he was all right.

“Hmm, damn,” he informed me, leaning heavily against my chest and more or less impersonating a wet noodle.  “Damn.”

“Are you freaking out?” I asked, using one of the phrases he’d taught me over the years.

“Hm?  Why?”

“Er, what I just said…  I thought…  You said that was off-limits.”

“Oh.  Uh, it was.  Yesterday.”

I snorted out a laugh.

“And it kinda still is.  We need lube and condoms first and… yeah.”

“I’ll add them to the shopping list.”

“Hah!  You would, too.”

Bracing himself on his hands, he pushed himself off of me until we were nose-to-nose.  “I think I should warn you,” he whispered, the teasing light in his eyes flattening into something somber and then glowing with a morbid passion, “I will go absolutely and irrevocably batshit on anyone who even thinks about touching you.”

The declaration was both completely random and very hot, but it was that look in his eyes – that strange, icy hunger – that made my breath catch and my pulse spike.  It would have caused me a moment’s pause if I hadn’t already become accustomed to Duo’s conversational riptide.

“Turnabout is fair play,” I replied, tilting my chin forward and touching our lips together briefly.  Well, I meant for it to be brief.  Duo opened his mouth and sucked out my tongue.  He placed his hand over my chest, pressing against the clay medallion he’d given me so long ago and his fingers curled until I felt the bite of his nails in my skin.

“I’m serious,” he said leaning back and pushing me up against the tiles.  That darkness flickered deep in his eyes again.  “Someone makes a move on you and they’ll be guaranteed a personal introduction to the God of Death.”

Taking a chance, I tangled my fingers in his wet hair roughly.  It was a bold move given the hunger pulling his smile into an expression of too many sharp teeth, but I needed his undivided attention.  Also, I did not care for the fact that he was scaring me a bit.  I channeled my fear into aggression and growled, “I’ll help you get rid of the body.”

For a moment, that mad, predatory grin on his face remained… and then he laughed, shaking my hand loose and doodling a pattern on my chest around the amulet.  “Awesome,” he approved.  “You’re awesome, babe.”

“You should meet my teacher,” I answered, concealing my relief behind a quick kiss.  Before another current brought his darkness to the surface, I pressed the bottle of shampoo into his hands.  “Lather me up and rinse me off.  I’ll deal with supper tonight.”

“Wow.  You spoil me,” he replied as he upended the shampoo bottle into his palm.

I hooked an arm around his waist and leaned in to nip his ear.  “Then I’d better eat you up quick.”

He wiggled out of my grasp and I let him go.  “Promises, promises,” he teased and got to work.

It was my turn to come through on dinner, so – naturally – I fell rather short of the mark.  I was glaring down at the pot of Spaghetti-Os in mute frustration when Duo padded up behind me and slid his arms round my waist.

“Italian for dinner!” he enthused and then he sniffed the slightly smoky air.

“Scorched,” I added, struggling to cling to my irritation.

“En flambé,” he corrected and kissed the side of my neck.  “You are a man of many, many talents.”

I snorted out a laugh.  “Cooking… er, _re-heating_ is not one of them.”

“Say no more.  I’ve got it covered.”  He untangled himself from around me and moved to fetch two soup bowls.  That was when I noticed that he was not only barefoot but he’d left his hair down.  Thank God the soup ladle was made of some kind of resin; if it’d been made of metal, it would have made a much louder noise when it slipped from my nerveless fingers and plunked back into the pot.

Duo didn’t notice.  Thrusting the bowls at me, he instructed, “Fill ‘em up.”

As I did – taking care not to embarrass myself with more displays of hormone-induced clumsiness – he opened up a loaf of bread and started buttering slice after slice.

“You ever had beans-on-toast?” he asked, setting a paper-serviette-supported tower of buttered bread on the table.

“Ja.”

“Same principle.”

I followed his lead as he slathered the non-perishable pasta onto a slice before rolling it all up for easy consumption.  Amazingly enough, it was edible.  I’d been in love with Duo for years but, in that moment, I felt it happen all over again.  After we finished eating, he carried our dishes over to the sink.  I trapped him against the counter and, when he turned around, I moved in for a deep and very appreciative kiss.

“Not that I’m complaining or anything,” he began when I decided to save some room for dessert, “but what was that for?”

“You fixed my cooking.”

He grinned.  “And if that’s the thanks I get… I’ll do it again!”

I was already looking forward to it.

Duo popped a DVD into the player, but we didn’t watch the film.  I had no interest in it when I had the curtain of Duo’s hair to pet and his smooth skin to explore beneath his long-sleeved Yankees T-shirt.  It took very little persuasion for me to get him to pay attention to me instead of the film.  Duo, perhaps drawing inspiration from his shirt, explained the concept of first base, second, third, and then the homerun.  In detail.  And it turned out that there _were_ tissues in the living room after all.  Very convenient.

We were both exhausted by the time we fell into bed at nearly two a.m. and yet, when I next opened my eyes, it was still dark outside and I was, inexplicably, completely awake.  _All_ of me, that is.  For a moment, I snuggled against his back, spooning him until we were almost one person.  My arousal pressed mindlessly against his hip, which was warm and firm.  My hand moved of its own accord, greedily palming the strong curve of a thigh muscle beneath his too-big shorts and then the flat terrain of his belly below his bunched-up shirt.  I’m sure he woke up long before my fingers tunneled between his waistband and slumber-warmed skin.

“Nugh… Trowa…” he groaned and I took that as permission to proceed.  It was still dark outside, so I couldn’t see his eyes.  I made up for the lack by teasing his skin with my breath as I pulled his shirt up and over his head, whispering his name and my want in the darkness.  His shorts ended up somewhere amongst the linens.  The early hour made me a bit lethargic and I stretched over him like a cat, straddling him.  He, in turn, rubbed against me, divested me of my shirt and sleep pants, and scratched his blunt nails down my back.  Oh, yes.  God, yes.

His skin was so warm and pliant.  I wanted to be consumed, engulfed, by him… which gave me an idea.  He arched and gasped when I guided my length beneath his sac and between his hot, bare thighs.  “All right?” I asked, massaging his bobbing length.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” he informed me, thrusting up, seeking more of my touch as I rocked downward, shuddering at the heat and the strength of his thigh muscles surrounding me.  “Y-you’re wet,” he moaned and I drew the pad of my thumb over his tip.

“You as well.”

We moved slowly toward our goal, stopping to shiver, to grope and kiss, to pant and whisper.  When I felt him swell in my lotion-slickened grasp, when I tasted tiny droplets of sweat on his firming chest muscles, I worked him faster and thrust down harder.  He came moments before I did, painting my hand with his essence as I did the same to the backs of his thighs and the bed sheet below.

“Oh my God,” he moaned, rubbing and squirming against me as I panted and rolled my hips in the lazy afterglow.  “That was… so hot, Tro.  Holy sh—”

And, at that precise moment, our alarm went off.

Bugger and fuck.

Given that the hand closest to the alarm was indisposed, I had to reach over with my other arm to shut it off.  When I did, I lost my balance.  I slid off of Duo, felt the edge of the mattress brush my hip, and then I was landing on my arse on the floor.  “Eish!”

“Shit!”  I heard his hand slam against the snooze button and all was silent except for our breathing.  “Tro, are you OK?”

I could hear him scrambling for the lamp and I reached out a hand to stop him.  “I’m fine,” I said, groping for his arm.  “But if you love me at all, don’t turn on the light.”  I could only imagine how ridiculous I looked sitting here bare-arsed with come smeared over my hand and belly and thighs.  Probably as ridiculous as I felt.

Duo snorted out a laugh.  “If a guy falls on his ass and nobody sees it, did it really happen?” he posited and I laughed.  It sounded one of Bryce’s Zen sayings.  Something about a tree falling in a forest.

“Ja,” I agreed and got up.  I wiped my hand on the sheet and gathered up a corner to attend to the rest of me.  Duo sat up and leaned over me, locating my shoulder with his lips and kissing his way up to my jaw.  I turned my head and captured his lips.

“Good morning,” I said when I’d finished suckling his tongue and he’d boldly caressed my entire torso and back.  If we didn’t get up now, we’d end up back in bed.

He giggled.  “I never thought I’d say this, but yeah, it is a good morning.”

I could hear the truth in his wondering tone.  I’d already made his day better.  I marveled yet again at his openness.  He gave me so much without even trying.  And probably without even realizing.

It wasn’t until I slid behind the wheel of the car that I realized I hadn’t been quite as honest with him.  The prom tickets and their envelope bent awkwardly in my pocket, poking me in the side through my sweater like an accusing elbow-to-the-ribs.

Duo noticed my wince.

“You OK?” he asked, settling into the passenger seat with a yawn.

I knew I ought to feel bad about that yawn.  It was completely and utterly my fault that he was tired.  Instead of contrition, it was pride and satisfaction that I had to beat back.  Duo had accepted me as his lover; Duo had let me wake him and have my way with him; Duo was _mine._

Which meant that I ought to take better care of him, both at home and when we ventured out.

Before I could come up with a reply to his inquiry, Duo hummed.  “Hm… that sounds an awful lot like a guilty silence you’re not-speaking over there.”

I snorted and put the car in gear.  Lifting my arm over the back of the seat, I started backing out of the parking space for apartment 1502.  “How do you know what a _guilty_ silence sounds like?”

“I’m an expert,” he claimed, his words slurring through another yawn.  “The rare and mysterious Trowa is capable of many unique and identifiable silences both in and outside his natural habitat—”

“You watched another documentary in Advanced Biology yesterday, didn’t you?” I accused drolly.  Shifting into overdrive, I pointed the bonnet of the car in the direction of the street.

He chuckled.  “Hey now.  I’m not accusing you of OD-ing on anatomy videos, am I?”

“Anato—!”  I bit off the word with a growl.  “I didn’t hear you complaining.”

“That’s because I—”  Another yawn.  “—wasn’t.”

I did feel guilty.  Despite his reassurances, his eyes were bloodshot and there were shadows beneath them.  His face was too pale and his smile, while sincere, lacked its usual exuberance.  “It won’t happen again,” I forced myself to promise.

“Now _that_ would be a damn shame.  And a damn waste,” Duo objected and I shifted helplessly in my seat when his palm quested over my thigh and his fingertips dragged along the inseam of my denims, up and down.  “Just swing through the McDonald’s drive-thru, babe.”

I did.

The scented steam from the badly brewed coffee swarmed the interior of the car like angry bees, but Duo sighed happily, sipping delicately until I pulled up in front of the school.  To my surprise, he slid the beverage into the cup holder nearest me.  “Can’t take it inside with me,” he explained, “so the rest is for you… not that you need it.”

He sounded just a little bitter.

“Should I say I’m sorry?” I checked.

“Yeah, but not for this morning.  Don’t you dare apologize for that.”

“What am I apologizing for?”

He grinned and winked.  “The hell Hilde’s gonna put me through until I break down and tell her _why_ I’m a zombie today… and then the hell she’s gonna put me through for actually telling her.”

“You could lie,” I offered.

“Yeah, but that’s not really my style.”

“I’ve noticed.”

He squeezed my knee before opening the car door and pulling himself out with the aid of what he called the “oh-shit handle.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” I belatedly offered, my knee still tingling.

Duo turned and leaned down into the open doorway.  He smiled.  “Oh, I know you will.”  His gaze traveled down my chest to my lap and then back up.  “Have a good day.”

It was not an easy request to fulfill, not when all I had to look forward to was lecture after lecture as I crammed myself into one bloody hybrid chair-and-desk contraption after another.  Clearly, the befokken things had not been designed for people with arms and legs as long as mine.  And I wasn’t even the biggest student.  Not by far.

“What’s up, man?”

I nodded in greeting as I set my lunch tray down at my usual table in the cafeteria.  “Ja-nee,” I told Odin with a shrug.  “Howsit?”

He shrugged in reply.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the oke except for the fact that he was built like a professional rugby player – a Number Eight and not a kilogram or centimeter less – and loomed over everyone else in the building.  Most of the other students tended to avoid him.  They avoided me as well.  Civilians could generally sense someone who stood out from the rest of the flock, in one way or another, and they steered themselves clear.

How strange that Duo had been drawn to me instead.

I slid into my seat and glanced across the table at Marie May, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old and was very pregnant.  She was the only other student who seemed immune to Odin’s impressive size and my inexpressive silence.  From the first day of the winter semester, she’d made a habit of sitting with us and nattering on about this or that as if we were two of her closest girl-friends.

“Hi, Trowa!”  Her cheeks dimpled as she grinned angelically up at me.  “How’s Duo?”

I felt my lips twitch in answer.  Her smile was almost as impossible to resist as Duo’s was.  “Fine.”

“You say that every day,” she complained, rolling her eyes.  “Try using a new word.”

 _Fokken exhausted_ came to mind.  So did _pressed senseless._   But those each consisted of two words.  “Caffeinated,” I finally answered.

“And just why would he need caffeine?” she teased, ignoring her Salisbury steak in favor of interrogating me.

“I don’t wanna know,” Odin interjected on a mutter.

I strangled back my snort of humor as the huge oke attempted to distract himself by staring in the direction of the nearest window.  It was snowing.  Again.

“I’d rather not say,” I agreed and he breathed out a sigh of relief.

Ja, he knew I was in a relationship with my “roommate,” Duo.  After showing up for my first day of school with Duo’s mark plainly displayed, I was pretty sure everyone had sussed out the fact that I was in a relationship with _someone_.  I’d been proud to let all and sundry know that I was wanted, that my heart and my loyalty had been claimed.  What I hadn’t anticipated were the speculative looks that a few of the girls had given me before they’d noticed the telltale bruise on my throat.  They’d let me alone, thankfully.

Although I hadn’t told anyone that I had a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend, the fact that Duo’s name was the only one I mentioned regularly had apparently been more than enough for Marie May to deduce the truth.  That was almost too much information for Odin, but Marie May was constantly trying to pry details out of me.

“That’s OK.  Maybe I can guess anyway!” she announced, right on cue.  “Hm, either Duo’s not a morning person or you guys had a late night.”

I was not about to answer that.  I gave her a long stare.  She didn’t look apologetic.  Yesterday, when she’d accused me of grinning the grin of He Who Has Gotten Laid, I hadn’t denied the accusation fast enough.  Now I was paying the price.

I cleared my throat.

“I don’t see any new hickeys,” she added playfully, craning her neck to get a better look at my neck from the other side of the table.

I didn’t tell her that was because I didn’t need them anymore.  Just as our paths had begun to take us to separate places for the majority of the day, I’d _needed_ Duo to mark me.  I’d needed some tie to him that would bridge the distance between us.  Now that our routines had settled, my anxiety had evaporated.  For the most part.  I couldn’t be completely relaxed and confident what with our every move being monitored.  But the marks hadn’t been about that.  Of course I’d bear any mark Duo chose to leave on me, and it made me harden just thinking about the one he’d asked for, the one I’d left on the inside of his pale, smooth, flawless thigh, but I didn’t _need_ it.  Attending separate schools hadn’t created a rift between us; I’d been a chop to fear that it would.  Thank God Duo hadn’t held it against me.  His understanding still left me breathless.

“Or maybe there _are_ love bites somewhere else—”

If I didn’t distract Marie May, Odin was going to cover his ears and start humming to drown her out.  I hastily countered with the first topic that came to mind thanks to a timely, papery poke from my coat pocket: “What do either of you know about prom?”

Odin grunted.  “Waste of money.”

“It is not!” Marie May insisted and, seeing the mocking expression on Odin’s unremarkable face, gave me her undivided attention.  “It’s really great, Trowa.  Everyone dresses up and it’s so romantic and all the guys are so dashing—!”

“Goddamn penguin suits,” Odin remarked.

Marie May rolled her eyes.  “They are not!  Look, Trowa, if you’ve been invited, you should go.  Totally.”

“I’ll take your recommendation under advisement,” I said, picking at my salad.  Why did they always put shredded cheese on every bloody thing in this country?

Odin laughed.  “Everyone in South Africa talk like you, man?”

I smirked.  “Just the larnies and boykies.  Good luck trying to suss out what an oke from some dorpie is on about.”

Marie May giggled.  “Your accent is so cool.”

Odin just sighed and shook his head.

Thankfully, that was the end of Marie May’s investigation into my private affairs for the day.  Unfortunately, both Odin and I were subjected to a detailed description of what all three of her older sisters had worn to their proms.

When I went to pick up Duo after school, he more or less cannonballed into the passenger seat to escape Hilde.

Reaching out to grab the door handle, he informed her on a weak laugh, “I _told_ you to use your imagination.  Creative editing requires too many brain cells.”

She braced herself in the open car door before he could pull it shut.  “All of which seem to be residing in your di—”

“Don’t say it, woman,” he cut in with such perfect timing that I sniggered.  “Zombification equals squick-tastic version of events.  Keep it in mind for the future.”

Feeling a bit evil, I leaned into Duo’s space and asked Hilde, “Did he tell you how I woke him up?”

“No,” she replied, _“that_ I wouldn’t have minded hearing.  Probably.  Mr. T-M-I here got _descriptive.”_

Duo rolled his eyes.  Petulantly, he muttered, “All I said was that being uncircumcised saves on hand lotion.”

I barked out a laugh.  He met my side-long glance with a cocky and unapologetic smile.

Hilde shuddered in revulsion.  “I hate you,” she informed him.

“Which is why you keep trying to tell me _– in_ _great and unnecessary detail –_ how you and Dorothy managed to puncture your waterbed mattress _again.”_

I had to clench my jaw to keep quiet enough to hear Hilde’s reply.

“Yeah, and you’re the only guy in school who doesn’t wanna know.”

“So tell _them!”_

“Those cowardly pervs?!”  She looked completely aghast.  “The only reason they don’t come right out and _ask_ is fear of Dorothy skinning them and wearing their hides as a mansuit.”

“Ugh!”  Duo grimaced.  “Tell me she wouldn’t really do that.”

Hilde grinned maliciously.  “The thought has crossed her mind.”

He shuddered.  “Congratulations.  You win the squick contest.  Now let me close the freakin’ car door already.”

Expression smug, she did.

“Bugger and fuck,” I muttered chuckling as Duo buckled his seatbelt and I put the car in gear.  “Never a dull moment.”

Duo melted against the seat in vaguely man-shaped pile of exhaustion.  “No shit.”  Guilt revisited me as he sighed out a breath from the depths of his very soul.  “I’m so damn glad this day is over with.  You have no idea.”

“Hm.”  I’d bet I did.  What I said was, “Pick your poison.  I’m buying dinner.”  It was the least I could do.

We got takeaway from a Chinese restaurant, munching through an order of spring rolls and slurping a bowl of egg drop soup apiece while they boxed up our rice and stirfry.  Duo crashed on the sofa the moment we walked in the door.  I knelt down next to him and pulled his shoes off his feet before unfurling the blanket that had been folded up over the back of a nearby armchair.  Laying it over him – uniform, winter coat, and all – I pressed my lips to his forehead.  Although he didn’t open his eyes, he mumbled, “Don’t apologize.”

“All right,” I acquiesced.

“Regret nothing,” he ordered and I had to admit it was good advice.

“No regrets,” I agreed and let him sleep.

After storing our takeaway boxes in the oven, I thought about working on my homework.  I had a page of geometry proofs to write, twenty algebra problems to solve, a chapter to read in American history, and the first act of Macbeth to absorb, so I resigned myself to doing that until Duo woke up for dinner.

When he did, we reheated the Chinese food.  I was startled when he actually made use of the wooden chopsticks we’d been provided.  I was happy with my tablespoon, but it was interesting to watch him use the things.  Interesting and enlightening.  It appeared I’d only begun to investigate Duo’s delightful dexterity.

Dinner consumed and clean-up managed, we crashed on the sofa to digest.  I kept Duo’s braid out of his way as he lounged back against my chest, using my thighs for armrests as he flipped through the channels.  It wasn’t long after he started drawing pictures on the knees of my denims and I started nuzzling his exposed neck that he abandoned the telly with a soft “Fuck it.”  He hit the Power button on the remote and squirmed around to face me.  My pulse picked up in anticipation.  He was a warm, wonderful weight between my thighs and on my chest.  His lips were only a brief stretch away.

With a small, knowing grin, Duo studied my mouth.  He groped blindly for a second remote on the low table, picked it up, aimed it at the stereo, and a moment later the opening strains of a symphony softly filled the room.

“Rachmaninoff.”  I catalogued it absently, still savoring the delicious moment of a soon-to-be kiss.  “The Isle of the Dead.”

Duo stiffened.

It wasn’t until the words left my mouth and echoed back to me that I recalled Duo telling me that the only god was the God of Death.  I remembered the grave in the Maxwell family cemetery that he’d walked away from rather than acknowledge.  I also remembered how he’d torn down the driveway at the house without even thinking to first put his seatbelt on.

Those things, in and of themselves, had not been all that disturbing, but a pattern was emerging now: in the entryway, the day before I’d started school, I’d been positive I was one misstep away from being _bitten_ rather than just pressed up against the wall and marked.  And there were other moments: the sound of glass breaking, which had made my heart leap into my throat even as I’d dived out of the bathroom to come to Duo’s aid; the echo of his dark growl as he confessed to wanting to kill the people who had given me my scars; that chilling moment in the shower yesterday when he’d threatened anyone who dared to touch me.

Oh yes, that seething darkness still clung to him, rising to the fore with or without provocation and here I’d just uttered words that might call it forth.

Duo pulled back a bit, tilted his head to the side, and simply looked at me.  But no, it wasn’t just a look.  He seemed to be carefully weighing my soul.  I held still for his scrutiny and braced myself.

When he finally spoke, I was completely taken aback.  Of course.  I should have known by now that it was impossible to predict Duo’s reaction to anything.

“I’m pretty sure I’m an idiot.”  He sat up and grabbed my hand.  “C’mon.”

I let him haul me out of the living room and down the hallway.  I blinked when he pulled me past both his bedroom and mine, dragging me further down to a door at the end of the hall that we’d never opened.  When I saw what was on the other side, I understood why.

It was a music room.

And, at the center, stood a magnificent piano.  I’d never been in the same room with one before.  My fingers tingled with sudden nerves, as if I were about to shake hands with the bloody President of the United States.  Although, truthfully, I probably wouldn’t feel this anxious were I face-to-face him.  No, I was done in by a perfectly benign musical instrument.  Of all things.

Duo released me and lifted up the seat on the bench to rifle through several sheets of paper and softcover books inside.

“Ah,” he said after a moment, pulling one particularly tattered book out and replacing the cushion.  He set the scuffed thing up on the easel and tucked the wooden keyboard cover up out of the way exposing the ebony and ivory themselves before seating himself before them.  And then he did the sexiest thing I’d ever seen: he placed his fingers delicately upon the ivory and proceeded to play a scale.  It was just a simple scale – one that he repeated up and down the keyboard – but I was transfixed.  Perhaps tonight was destined to be yet another night for falling in love with Duo all over again.

He looked up and patted the seat next to him in invitation.  I slid in beside him before my knees gave out and I ended up on my arse on the floor for the second time today.

“It’s still pretty much in tune,” he informed me.

“Is this the piano your—your mother…?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “My mom used to play this.”  His lips curved into a nostalgic smile.  “She’d play Solo and me to sleep.”

I had no response to that.

“I’ll warn you now,” he began.  “I can’t play.  I mean, really.  I suck at the piano, but I can get you started.”

“What?”

He nodded toward the keyboard.  “Put your fingers on the keys.  Like this.”

He demonstrated by bouncing his fingertips on the ivory.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my denims before I copied him.  Well, I tried to.  He leaned over and shifted my hand two keys down.

“OK, good.  Let’s try C major.”

He walked me through the scale until I could do it with both hands in tandem.  Then he started to show me how to sound out a melody with my right and a harmony with my left.

“Sweet,” he encouraged me.  And then he got off the bench and gestured for me to move to the very center of it.  He stood behind me and opened the book.

And then he taught me how to read.

It was so simple once he’d explained the system to me.  I’d been right to think Duo would make a great teacher.  He was patient and thorough, methodical and encouraging. 

I remembered being jealous of him in Egypt when he’d read the hieroglyphs on the tomb walls, but if I’d known he could do _this—!_   I didn’t know what I would have done.  Maybe nothing different.  But maybe I would have done nothing _at all:_ maybe I would have been too envious or too in awe of him to kiss him that night under the sail.  The very thought was devastating.  But I hadn’t hesitated.  I’d kissed Duo; I’d fallen in love with him; I’d let him change my life – change _me_ – and bring us both to this moment.

No, I didn’t know what I would or wouldn’t have done if I’d known he understood the one skill I’d secretly coveted for as long as I could remember.  All I knew _now_ – at this very moment – was that he was incredible.  And, incredibly, he was just giving this knowledge to me.  I knew he would never ask for anything in return.  He wouldn’t see it as a debt, a favor, or even a gift.  Even after all these years, I couldn’t comprehend how someone like him could be real.

But he _was_ real.  And he was _mine._

He took me on a journey through the scales, through chords and what I learned were called “arpeggios.”

“You doing OK?” he checked, leaning forward to get a clear line of sight to my expression.

I turned my head away from the piano, brushing my lips against his with a smile.  I smiled like I had when I’d opened the package he’d sent me via Professor Merquise’s faculty mailbox in Cairo and had found a lifeline to him inside.  I smiled like I had when he’d sent me his first text message and his second and third…!

I told him, “Ja.  I’m fine.”

“Good,” he answered and then turned a few pages.  “Let’s skip the rest of this intro stuff for now and try a song.”

I looked at the title he’d chosen.  My smile fled.  I felt myself pale.  “This is Beethoven.”

I couldn’t play something like this.  This was a classic, a masterpiece.  This was—

“Just notes on a page,” Duo insisted softly.  “What’s the first?” he asked and my hand was moving before I even thought about it.  And then I was playing.  The melody of Beethoven’s _F_ _ür Elise_ was coaxed out, one hesitant note at a time, from my fingertips.  Duo didn’t let me pause when I reached the end of the first line.

“Try it again,” he urged, pointing me back to the beginning, and the song rolled forth, haltingly at first with a slip and a wrong key and a few notes struck too late, but I kept on in this way – carefully feeling my way through a line of notes and then going back to play it again – until I reached the bottom of the page.

I didn’t play the entire song, only the first twenty seconds or so, but…

But I’d played.  Beethoven.  On the piano.

And then Duo placed my left hand upon the keyboard, twitching his fingers in time and in sympathy as he coached me through fitting the harmony into the melody.  I knitted and wove and the air dripped with the color of the notes until I could taste the music, until it soaked into my skin and my heart was beating with it, pumping it through my veins.  All the songs on my iPod couldn’t compare to this.  Those recordings were pale shadows of the magnificent beast itself, which rose at my command as if summoned from some invisible realm.

It was magic.

As the final notes at the bottom of the page were echoing in the room, I blinked, coming back to the here and now, startled by how easily I’d fallen under the spell of the music.  I hadn’t simply moved my fingers and played a song.  I’d _become_ the song.

“Duo…?” I whispered.

He placed a hand on my shoulder.  “Amazing,” he breathed.  “I had a feeling you would be.”

I was shaking.  From reaction, perhaps, but reaction to _what?_ There were no enemies here, no battles, no close-calls, no near-death-encounters.  Duo was here and I was safe and it was only music, wasn’t it?

“How did you know?” I heard myself ask.  My voice was a trembling thread of its usual tone.

He chuckled, toying with my long bangs with such tenderness it was more delicate than the footsteps of a butterfly.  He said, “Suddenly, out there on the sofa, it just came to me.”  He paused and then added, “I bet you know more about music than anyone I’ve ever met.  I was an idiot to only think of this now.”

For a moment, I didn’t say anything.  I couldn’t.  My next thought tangled me up so badly that words were impossible.  Pulling my hands away from the keys, I finally asked, “Am I… was that any good?”

Duo propped a knee up on the bench beside me and wrapped his arms around me.  I felt his chin dig into my shoulder.  “Now who’s being an idiot?” he breathed.  “It was unbelievable.”

Again, I was speechless.

Duo’s hands reached for mine, gathering them as if he were holding something precious and fragile in his grasp.  “Should have known,” he mused again, shaking his head with wonder.  “They’re artist’s hands.  I should have known.”

I grasped his fingers and turned on the bench, pulling him down to straddle it, facing me.

“You…”  Emotions were running high: I was both terrified and thrilled by the version of myself that I’d just glimpsed, that Duo had just shown me.  Just like that night at the dig site, I cradled his face in my hands.  I suddenly – urgently – needed him to _know—_   “You remake me.”

He gasped.  His eyes brightening with tears I knew he wouldn’t cry.  “Trowa,” he breathed.

I’d made love with him so many ways, with all my heart and soul.  I’d kissed him gently, deeply, briefly, savoringly.  But here, on this piano bench, in the trembling silence of my first music lesson, something happened.  Something that moved me so deep into him and him so deep into me…  Either we’d just found a state of being beyond that of lovers or I’d never really understood the meaning of the word to begin with.

Right then and there, I promised myself that I would never forget this moment.  I would never forget this Duo, this me, and when we kissed, it felt like the sealing of an oath.  If I hadn’t been fully aware of to whom this room had once belonged, I probably would have had him right there on the piano bench.

When we both pulled back, Duo giggled.

“What?” I asked, already smiling in anticipation of the joke.

“We just had a Hollywood moment.”

“Hm?”

“Making out in the general vicinity of a piano.”

“How unoriginal of us.”

“See, I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned it.  Greatness ought to be encouraged.”  He winked.

Inexplicably embarrassed, I mumbled, “Is that what you call it?”

“What _I_ call it?” he retorted, trying to look offended.  “If I crack open a dictionary and look up the word ‘great’, guess whose picture they printed there for the definition?”

“Goof,” I insisted, leaning forward to place a kiss on the side of his neck.  I inhaled deeply, appreciating the warmth trapped there by his messy and sleep-loosened braid.  Just for the hell of it, I said, “I was talking about making out.”

“Oh.  Well, your picture’s there, too.”

I laughed.  God, I loved him.

His fingers trailed through my bangs again.  “You wanna keep playing?”

I wasn’t sure if I should.  The past hour felt like a dream.  In some ways, I wished it had been.  In others, I dreaded that I was about to wake up.  I ought to call it a night and let this newness sink in, but the lure of what else I could create and craft was a siren’s song.

“It’s all right?” I checked, wondering if I dared to try the next page of the composition.

He chuckled.  “Don’t even, man.  You’re practically vibrating.”  He climbed off of the bench and, planting his hands on my shoulders, turned me back toward the keyboard.  “Impress me,” he ordered softly.

Smiling, I thumbed the page aside.  “You asked for it,” I told him.

I put my fingers back on the keys, struck the first note, and then the magic was back and it was filling me up.  It made me tingle, much like when Duo touched me but different, complementary.  If he was my world, then the music was the air I breathed, and I breathed it in again and again.  This wasn’t simple survival or the necessity of existing.  This was _life_ and _infinity_ and—

—warm arms slid around my shoulders and hugged me back against a chest that I instantly recognized as Duo’s.  My hands slid off the piano when the final notes of the song misted into silence.  I had no idea how long I’d been practicing, of how many times I’d played the song, of how many variations I’d experimented with, but I was optimistic that I’d nearly mastered the whole thing.  I still hadn’t committed it to memory – not quite – and there were a few bars I was sure needed to be played softer, faster, and I hadn’t sussed out the significance of the piano’s foot pedals yet, but it was—

“Awesome,” Duo purred in my ear.

Suddenly, I felt exhausted.  I leaned against him and closed my eyes.  I could still hear the music, could still see and feel the keys, haunting me like ghosts.

“C’mon,” he urged.  “I made French toast.”

“Hm?”  I opened my eyes and searched for a clock.  “How long was I—?”

I didn’t bother finishing the question.  The clock on the wall said it was nine-thirty.  I’d been sitting here for three hours.

_Three hours._

“Duo?”  Heart pounding, I sought him out for confirmation.

He nodded.  “C’mon,” he repeated and, when I stood up, I actually felt a little dizzy.  My stomach growled.  Duo laughed softly.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.  In a contest of Beethoven versus Mongolian Beef…”  He shrugged eloquently.  “I’m pretty sure Genghis Khan gets his ass whooped every time.”

I still couldn’t believe that I’d been absorbed in the same song for three hours.  Surely, I would have noticed.  Surely, I would have driven Duo insane.  Surely, he was teasing me; he must have snuck in and changed the time on the clock before I’d noticed.  But all the clocks in the apartment read 9:30 or some close approximation of it.  Even my wristwatch, which I was still wearing.  While I didn’t doubt that Duo could have gone to all the trouble of changing every single clock – even the one on the DVD player – I didn’t really believe he would have.  And it would have been impossible for him to fiddle with my watch.

“Three hours?” I asked, numb with disbelief as he nudged me toward a seat and a plate of still-steaming French toast.

“Yup.”

It made no sense for him to look so befokken pleased with himself.  I’d just ignored him for three solid hours.  “What did you do?” I ventured.  “While I was…?”

“Company stuff,” he said.  “Got that big video conference on Saturday.”

And I had another training session with Septum.  I was not particularly looking forward to it.

He added, “And I ran an errand.”

A forkful of toast nearly at my mouth, I froze.  “You went out?”

Duo’s grin was crooked.  “Huh.  I guess you really did space out on me.”

I blinked at him as my silent panic mounted.

He explained, “I _told_ you I was going out.”

I had no memory of this.  Was _this_ the price to be paid for my time spent at the piano?  I was completely and utterly terrified.  I set my fork down before I drove it and the bits of toast I’d speared with it into the table, tines first.  “Did I reply?”

“You sorta grunted.  To be honest, I didn’t wanna bug you.”

I felt my jaw clench.  I forced myself to breathe.  Dear God, if he’d been approached by Khushrenada or one of his lackeys while he’d been out…  If he’d been threatened…  If he’d been _taken…!_   When would I have noticed?  How would I have found him?  What would I have done?  Who would I have gone to for help?

But I already knew the answer to that last point: no one.  There was no one on whom I could rely.  There was no one who would believe my accusations against Treize Khushrenada.  And by the time my troupe arrived to back me up, Duo could be anywhere in the world.  He could be _dead._

Oh, fuck.  Bugger and fuck and _fuck all._   I could have lost him.

My hands were shaking, so I fisted them.  I had to calm down.

“Tro?” he prompted questioningly.

“Bug me,” I rasped, not trusting myself to meet his gaze.

“OK,” he agreed, giving me a narrow-eyed look as I struggled not to scream at him.  “I’ll try harder next time.”

I let out one more breath and looked up.  Although the mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes assured me that he definitely would try harder next time, I doubted there would be a need for it.  I was not going anywhere near that fokken piano ever again. 

The decision wrenched my heart like I’d taken a spanner to it, but it eased the clamp around my lungs and released my limbs from the rack of uncertainty that had drawn me taut.  I was not choosing a bloody instrument over Duo’s safety.  The end.

I drew in a deep, cleansing breath and picked up my fork.  Disaster had been averted and I had Duo all to myself.  I endeavored to make the most of it.  I kicked him playfully under the table and, when he smiled at me, everything was all right again.

French toast demolished and dishwasher loaded, I led Duo back to the sofa.  Mozart was playing on the radio now.  I pulled Duo down with me and, eager to forget the close call, I asked with a smile, “Where were we?”

“Oh, you mean before we were so _rudely_ interrupted by my brilliant idea?” he inquired on a chuckle as he crouched over me.

“Ja,” I concurred, just to earn myself a measure of playful retribution.  “Then.”

“Hm, well…” he drawled, leaning closer.  “I think I was here—”  He snuggled down between my knees again and laid his folded arms over my chest.  “—and you were like so—”  He tugged on my sweatshirt until my mouth was a small stretch away from his.  “—and we were in the middle of one of those long, drawn-out looks that drip with unresolved sexual tension and—”

I kissed him.  Not just to shut him up or because he was expecting me to, but because touching him – tasting him – anchored me.  I knew who I was when I was with him.  The me who had spent the last three hours in some kind of meditative trance, the me who had ignored Duo and let him go out without any backup whatsoever, drove me absolutely bosbefok.  But Duo was fine.  He was safe and here and kissing him made all that residual fear melt away.

Mindful of how easy it would be to pull his hair, I gently worked my fingers into its depths and was rewarded by his purr of appreciation.  God but he denied me nothing.  And I would give him anything.  Not in payment of a debt, but as an investment in the future.  Our future.  And it was starting right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Zen saying (or koen) is “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, did it make a sound?”
> 
> Marie May is, you guessed it, Mariemeia from Endless Waltz. She’s not Treize’s daughter in this, though. No relation at all in this AU. Also, Odin Lowe (Heero’s caretaker in the Episode Zero manga) is closer to Trowa’s age and has never met Heero. I’m just borrowing some GW “fringe” characters to fill up the cast in “Tomb Raiders.”


	12. Prom Night, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme music: "Juliet" by Emilie Autumn

“How can you _do_ that?”

I finished the sit-up I was in the middle of and stayed upright, meeting Duo’s incredulous stare.  I’d been doing my basic workout routine during his showers ever since we’d come to New York.  Tonight, as I’d been contemplating the piano lesson and my uselessness in watching his back, I’d come to the conclusion that it was time to add a small bit to Duo’s already heaping plate.  Now that he was free from his obligations to the swim team, he might have time for other forms of training.  I needed him to make the time.  For my own peace of mind.  So I’d prolonged my workout and made sure he caught me.

I cleared my throat, feeling inexplicably nervous about the manipulation I was about to implement.  “It’s routine,” I finally replied.

He rolled his eyes and held out a hand for me to grasp.  “No, babe,” he muttered, pulling me to my feet when I accepted his offer.  “I meant: how can you do that after, y’know…”

I smirked.  “After I came so hard my brain liquefied and dribbled out of my ears?”  One thing had led to another on the sofa earlier, as it usually did.

“Hah!  Took the words right outta my mouth.”

“Then I’d better put them back where I got them,” I answered, sliding an arm around his waist and pulling him close.  He was wearing his old Rocky Horror Picture Show T-shirt.  In the intervening years, repeated washings had left it a bit tatty, but it made me smile.  It made me remember the day we met.  It made me marvel at how far he and I have come: here I was with my arms around him.

He sighed softly even before I kissed him and, as kisses went, it was deep.  It was long.  It was leisurely.  That was yet another thing about Duo that left me overwhelmed: he never rushed these moments; he never cut our kisses short; he never let the outside world come between us.

When we parted, he kept his palms flat on my bare and slightly sweaty chest.  He leaned his pelvis into mine, letting me hold him very, very close.  “You know this building has a gym.”

I nuzzled against his ear so that he wouldn’t see my grin of triumph.  “I don’t know the key code for the door.”

Duo told me what it was and, the next afternoon, I hauled him in there with me.

“Dude,” he objected, still chewing on the last bite of his after-school peanut butter sandwich.  “What’s the deal?”

“You promised,” I began, couching the words in the form of a challenge that I knew he wouldn’t be able to walk away from, “to show me how well you fought once we had a mat at our disposal.”

His gaze slid in the direction of the five-meter by five-meter wrestling mat beside the dumbbell rack.

“Right,” he drawled, his mouth twitching into a knowing smirk.

I knew he could fight, but with our hands and feet bare and a stable, unlikely-to-leave-bruises-or-break-bones surface at our disposal, I could finally see what kind of moves he knew.  As he wiggled and twisted out of my grip time and time again, my estimation of his abilities went up notch after notch.

While we circled each other for the sixth time, I appraised, “Very nice, but what would you do if I grabbed your braid?”

His grin was one of warning.  “I’d take it personally.”

Right.  Perhaps we’d better get mouth guards, head gear, and hand wraps before we ventured into the realm of dirty street fighting.

We spent over an hour in the gym together.  We were the only ones there and, more than once, I was tempted to pin him to the mat and show him just how lekker I thought he was.  On the two occasions when I _did_ manage to take him down and keep him there, I had to forcibly remind myself that another building resident could walk in at any moment.  And when Duo managed to get _me_ flat on my back – thanks to a rather boisterous tackle – I could see the same thoughts glittering in his eyes and stretching his smile wide.

While we were on the mat, we restricted our contact to wrestling maneuvers, and I didn’t dare touch him once we’d stepped off it.  I made myself wait until the apartment door had shut behind us before stalking him toward the shower as, grinning, he dropped articles of musky and damp clothing along the way.

We’d taken a shower together just a few days earlier, but it seemed like far too much time had passed in between.  As our wet, slick chests slid against each other and our sudsy hands groped across defined shoulders, down flat bellies, and over toned thighs, I considered the very real possibility that I might be developing an addiction to him.

When I dared to smooth a palm over his arse, he whined and wiggled, lifting one foot up and bracing it on the edge of the tub in what looked like an invitation.

“All right?” I checked, rocking gently against him as my fingertips ventured very slowly between his taut buttocks.

“Hmm, please…” he hissed, and – heart pounding, blood rushing, and vision swimming with arousal – I touched him there.  “Oooh,” he informed me, dragging out that single note of approval until I shivered and trailed my fingers over him again.  “Ungh!”  His eyes slid shut and his fingers curled until his blunt nails were digging into my shoulders.

“Ahh, Duo…”  I massaged him with increasing fervor until he was loose, until I could have slipped a digit inside him and felt him.  I could imagine it: deep, hot, soft, strong, tight…

And then he grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand away, and I found myself grasping his hard length as he collected mine.  His hand at the back of my neck and mine on his hip anchored us together as the swell of need crested and poured over-through- _out_ of us.  I came first.  How could I not with _those_ thoughts riding me?  Those thoughts of a part of me being _inside_ him, of him wanting me the same way I wanted him?

We panted until we kissed.  We kissed until we caught our breaths.  Then I washed and rinsed my hair before ducking out and surrendering the stall to him.  I’d only get in the way while he washed his hair.  Besides, I had something to take care of.

Hair dry and clothes donned once again, I headed back downstairs to the car to collect the shopping bag in the boot.  Returning, I heard the shower still running, so I was in no rush to stow my purchases.  When I knelt down beside Duo’s nightstand and opened the drawer, I was met with a surprising sight.  A box of condoms, a tube of lubricant, a box of tissues, a pack of moist towelettes, and even a couple actual flannels had been crammed into the space.

I blinked.  A frown tugged at my brow as I wondered when Duo would’ve had the opportunity to buy these without my knowledge.

_The piano lesson._

Ah.  Of course.  His errand.

Speaking of which, it was only a matter of time before he requested that I give him his space.  What was I going to do then?  Follow him like a bloody stalker?  Or was I going to remind him of Khushrenada and watch his happiness be replaced by tension and fury?  Or was I going to say nothing and trust him to look after himself?

Duo _could_ look after himself in a fight.  He’d shown me that in the car park outside the arena where the state swim meet had been held.  I’d almost asked him if the fight had been triggered by Khushrenada, but at the last possible moment I’d substituted my second greatest fear: that someone would try to hurt him because he’d chosen me.

But no.  The reason for the fight had been mundane, thankfully.  That didn’t mean that things would be so easily dealt with next time, though.  And given the fact that Khushrenada had faded rather too well into the woodwork, I was sure there _would_ be a next time.

And was I going to make him face his enemy one out?

I shook my head and sighed.  I had to stop inventing complications that didn’t yet exist.  Duo would face that bliksem Khushrenada when he was ready.  Until then, I’d stay as close as I could and I’d make sure that Duo _wanted_ me close.  Which was precisely what the new items in the bureau were implying.

I felt a wry grin tug at my lips.  It looked like the condoms and lube that _I’d_ picked up on the way to fetch him from school today wouldn’t be necessary.  I went across the hall to my bedroom and stowed them there, just in case they were needed.

I thought it rather ridiculous for me to have a separate room, but Duo seemed to think that I needed my own space.  I didn’t.  I’d never had a private space all to myself before.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it.  If not for the fact that I needed someplace to keep my clothes – Duo’s bedroom closet and dresser were practically on the verge of exploding – I probably would have moved my things into his room and been done with it.

But, considering the bad luck Hilde and Dorothy had with beds, perhaps it was wise to have a backup.  The condoms and lube safely stashed, I pondered whether Duo was waiting for me to discover his preparations and inquire about them or if he was intending for them to be a surprise.  Still, this did _not_ seem like the sort of thing he’d try to surprise me with…

I sighed.  When in doubt, ask.  So, when Duo emerged from the bathroom and found me on the sofa trying to kill time by absorbing the international news report, I turned off the telly and waited until he’d plopped down next to me before I said, “I noticed the additions to your bedside bureau.  Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

To my surprise, Duo smirked in reply.  Giving me a conspiratorial look, he countered, “I noticed the passengers in your coat pocket.  Is there anything _you’d_ like to tell _me?”_

For a moment, I had no fokken idea what he was scheming.  I blinked at him.  He arched his brows and tilted his head toward the front door where his winter coat and mine were hanging up.

And then the penny dropped.

“Bugger and fuck,” I hissed, letting my head fall back against the sofa cushions.  To his credit, Duo didn’t say anything.  He just sat and watched me, his chin propped up in his hand as he leaned against the back of the sofa.  “How did you find them?” I eventually asked, hoping to buy a bit of time.

“Oh, uh, I grabbed your coat yesterday when I went out to buy that stuff.  It didn’t feel right walking through condomland in the clothes I wear to school, y’know?”

I chuckled.  Ja, his winter coat had the school’s emblem embroidered onto the lapel.  That might have been an awkward moment at the cash register.  “Did I ruin the surprise?” I asked.

“No,” he answered simply and I had no idea if he was referring to the condoms or the prom tickets.  He reached out and traced the locks of my dislodged bangs, saying only, “So.  Prom?”

There was nothing in his expression to guide my response.  Hilde had implied that he disliked the notion, but there was no hint of that now.  He appeared genuinely ambivalent and I realized that I could probably ask Duo to take me to his school’s prom.  He would probably say yes; he’d certainly never denied me anything outright.  But the trouble was that I wasn’t sure I _did_ want to go.  Yes, I wanted to see Duo dance.  I was positive that he’d swaai like a dream.  But I wasn’t all that keen on being in the company of his no doubt _many_ admirers.  Duo was mine and I didn’t feel like sharing.

I sighed again.  When in doubt: the truth.

I rocked my head toward him and met his patient yet amused gaze.  “It would be more accurate to say that there’s something Hilde and Dorothy would like me to ask you on their behalf.”

He snorted softly.  “Ah.  It’s all coming together now.”  The squint of his eyes and their far-off focus told me he was browsing through his memories and likely coming up with the not-arse-pinching incident on Tuesday.  And then he shocked me into stone-stillness by asking with perfect neutrality, “Do you wanna go?”

“You don’t,” I replied.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“I don’t have one.”  I was too conflicted on the matter to decide and I had too little objective information on the event to make a value judgment on it.

“OK,” he said and the subject was closed.

I had no idea if I’d just agreed to go or not.  It unsettled me for all of three seconds before I reminded myself that this was Duo’s territory; if he wanted me to go with him, he’d handle all the arrangements, so I had nothing to worry about, regardless.

“So, whaddaya wanna do tonight?” Duo asked suddenly.

I snorted.  “Is that one of those trick questions?”

His eyes sparkled with mirth.  “What do you think I’m trying to trick you into?”

I narrowed my eyes at him.  No matter what I said in response, I was reasonably certain I’d be backing myself into a corner.

He let out a breathy chuckle and gave in.  “OK, how about I promise _not_ to end our evening with a tux fitting?”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” I replied drolly.

“And… the condoms stay in their retail packaging.”

I nodded.  I had no problem with waiting.  Truthfully, I was pretty sure I’d embarrass myself even worse than I had yesterday morning when I’d fallen out of the bloody bed.

“That still leaves a lot of territory to, ah, cover,” he murmured, studying my expression from where he was still leaning against the sofa cushion, chin in hand.

“Well,” I said, “there’s that macaroni and cheese in the freezer.”

“That’s not a very romantic dinner,” he observed, not looking at all against the idea, “and I’ve been told that today – being Valentine’s Day and all – is the day for pink hearts and purple prose and chocolate bonbons and shit like that.”

I huffed out a laugh.  “Do I look like I need chocolate bonbons to make my life complete?”

“Not really,” he admitted, sitting up on his knees and looming over me.  I tilted my head back and waited for him to make his move.  “But you could be a closet chocoholic.”

“Cupboard,” I corrected him and then impatiently reached up to hook my hand around the back of his neck, dragging him down for a kiss.  As his lips brushed mine, I mumbled, “And it depends what the chocolate is covering.”  My fingertips roved over his jawline.

He kissed me briefly, pressing our lips together gently.  “Wow,” he remarked, “you’d deal with all those empty calories just to…?”

I finished the thought he’d left hanging.  “Just to get to the Duo underneath?  Ja.  I’m prepared to make sacrifices.”

He chuckled.  “That’s some sacrifice.”

“A pittance,” I argued back, tilting my chin up and kissing him again, prolonging the contact.  I would die for him, kill for him, lie for him…

When he pulled back, he gave me a speculative look.  “Hey.  Let’s just skip the sacrifices and get on with being awesome.”

So that’s what we did.  Dinner ended up being very, very late, but I didn’t mind.

“You’re distracted again,” Sally accused me the next afternoon as we were going over my schoolwork.  We were due to start working on those standard five-paragraph essays that Duo had mentioned awhile back and I knew I needed to concentrate, but something was stopping me.  And it wasn’t that I thought Duo was going to give himself a paper cut or some such as he prepared for his weekly video conference at the office downtown tomorrow afternoon.

“It’s nothing,” I insisted.  It wasn’t, but I didn’t really want to discuss it with her.

“Hm,” she replied, clearly not believing me.  “Let’s take a break.”

I braced myself for the topic of the day.  They were usually personal.  During our first meeting, she’d laughingly asked where I’d learned penmanship.

“From a bunch of mercs,” I’d answered.  She’d laughed and then sobered when she’d realized I was being serious.  In short order, she’d begun rattling off one question after another: How long had I been with them?  (Since I could remember.)  What kind of work had I done?  (Contracted protection of private property, mostly.)  Had I left Africa to find different work?  (That hadn’t been my main motivation, but I’d let her think otherwise.)  And so on.  _That_ had been a bloody _long_ five-minute break.

Today, she asked, “How did you meet Duo… if you don’t mind me asking?”

That seemed safe enough.  I described the dig site and tree under which I’d been cleaning my dismantled rifle, the weight that had fallen on me from above, my reflex and then my surprise at finding Duo lounging up there on the branch, previously undetected by me, a trained mercenary.  “Gives the word ‘disarming’ a whole new meaning,” I mumbled with a hesitant smile.

Sally laughed softly.  “Although I’ve never seen him go all-out, I’ve always imagined Duo would be very charismatic and charming.”

Her assumption that he had gone _all-out_ for my sake made me feel suddenly too-warm and a bit embarrassed.  I bullied through the moment.  “Charming, ja,” I agreed.

“But not charismatic?”

I shook my head slowly.  “Not the usual sort.  People like that are usually after something.”  And I’d seen my share of that breed from a distance.  More often than I cared to acknowledge, the troupe had ended up guarding some land baron’s holdings.  Those powerful men had all been charismatic… until they’d stubbed their toe on a metaphorical stone in their path.  Then they’d gotten nasty.  Duo wasn’t like that at all.  He was genuine.

“Duo just…”  I shrugged.  “He just wanted to know me.”

Sally tilted her head to the side.  “You’re worth knowing, Trowa.”

“No one bothered before him.  Civilians don’t trust people like me.”  My gaze shifted in the direction of the kitchen where I could occasionally hear Miles working on dinner.  He was always there, out of sight, whenever I came over for a lesson.

Not that I blamed him.  I would have done the same if Duo were the one welcoming a stranger into our home.  And I _did_ act that way whenever we went out: although Duo never mentioned him, _I_ never forgot that Khushrenada was out there somewhere, biding his time.

“Trowa,” Sally said, lowering her voice.  The confidential tone drew my undivided attention, “I’ve been meaning to suggest…  Well, it’s clear how deeply you care about Duo, and I’m not making a statement about his preferences, but…”  She sighed and gathered herself before saying plainly, “He might interpret your interest sexually.”

I stared at her, tense.

My silence must have answered the implied question sufficiently because she nodded once, satisfied with my nonverbal confirmation.  “Here,” she said, pulling a folded sheet of copy paper from the folder of notes she’d brought to the table with her.  “There’s a lot of misinformation out there, but those websites—”  Her gaze fell to the paper I’d accepted.  “—are reliable.”

I assumed she was referring to information about sex.  She didn’t ask me if I had any experience, for which I was thankful.  Nor did she lecture me.  In fact, when she smiled, it was as if the subject had never come up at all.

“I’m getting a refill,” she said, standing.  “Would you like another cup of coffee?”

“Please,” I mumbled and tucked the sheet of paper away in my pocket while she went to fetch the pot.

I came home to find Duo in his room.  Nothing was broken.  Nothing was damaged.  He was fine.  The knot that had been giving me rope burn from inside the center of my chest fell apart and my relief was dizzying in its intensity.  Ever since that one morning before school – ever since that sudden, heart-stoppingly terrifying crash of shattering glass – I’d feared something else would happen.  Something worse.  Something that damaged more than just a coffee cup.

Whenever I was away from him, I worried if he’d find himself in the grip of another unpredictable rage.  And I wondered where that rage would take him.  Dear God, the look on his face when I’d skidded into the kitchen that morning, heart pounding and body braced for a fight…  I’d never seen such fury in him before.  I’d never felt it pour forth from _anyone_ like it had from him, and given my past experiences, that was quite the statement.  Duo had given me a skirk all right.  And while I could be relatively confident that he’d be fine at school or at company headquarters where he was surrounded by people, I wasn’t so sure about leaving him alone.

Of course, I knew I couldn’t keep an eye on him every minute of the day, even outside of school and work.  Still, trusting him while knowing he might experience one of those intermittent moments of instability was not an easy task.

Today, I needn’t have worried: all was well.  He’d changed out of his uniform and put on baggy denims and an old T-shirt.  He was sprawled out on his belly on the bed, his hands fisted in his tatty braid as he glared at a page crammed from top-to-bottom and side-to-side with columns of numbers. 

“All right?” I asked.

“No,” he told me.  “My head’s gonna explode if I look at one more balance sheet.”

I wordlessly picked up his school bag and held it out to him.  “Pick another poison,” I advised.

Grinning, he reached in and blindly selected a textbook.  It was calculus.

“Fuck,” he grumped, slamming the thing down onto the mattress.  “God hates me.”

I smiled at him.  “Say the word, bokkie, and I’ll donner him black and blue.”

Duo grinned back.  “And let you have all the fun?” he playfully objected before asking, “How’d it go with Sally?”

“Fine,” I said more out of reflex than any desire to be evasive.  Only after the word left my mouth did I realize I probably could – even _ought to_ – share some things from the lesson with him.  But first—  “Can I borrow your computer?”

“Sure.  Anytime.  You gonna email the guys?”

“Ja.”

“Make sure you tell them how awesome I am.”

“Done.”

I took care of my email chores first while Duo cursed and scribbled and erased madly at his calculus homework, scattering eraser boogeys amongst the rumpled and unmade covers of the bed in the process.  When I was done with my weekly update email and I’d sent the spam mail to the electronic rubbish bin, I logged out of my email provider and pulled the sheet of copy paper from my pocket to look up the sites that Sally had recommended.

Fifteen minutes later, I was a little unsettled by how closely Duo and I probably come to hurting each other.  He and I had done dangerous things before: I’d taught him how to shoot a rifle and wield a knife in a fight.  And, just yesterday, we’d been grappling with only marginal restraint on the mat in the gym, but this was something different.  I was inexplicably terrified by all that could go wrong.

Of course, Duo might know more about sex than he’d let on.  Maybe it would be fine.  Maybe not.  In any case, that was not a risk I wanted to take; I wanted our first time to be worth remembering.  I did not want it to be awkward, embarrassing, or – God forbid – painful.

This particular part of the body wasn’t meant to be used roughly and given how thin my control around Duo was generally, I very well might have hurt him.  Or he me.  And I couldn’t do that to him.  I doubted he’d forgiven himself for whatever failure he still assigned himself with regards to his father’s death.  I couldn’t add  _this_ to it.  The both of us needed a far better command of ourselves before we could attempt this sort of thing.

But there was something else beneath that reason that I couldn’t pin down.  Not that I needed further justification for putting things off – Duo’s safety was more than sufficient – but a ghost of an idea was lurking at the back of my mind, warning me away from this.  Oddly enough, I thought of Khushrenada’s presence on the fringes of our life.

With a sigh, I shook my head.  I sat back and glanced at the paper Sally had given me and was suddenly determined to buy her a thank-you gift.  Due to the living allowance that Maxwell Limited provided me, I could certainly afford something nice and, for her intervention, I was truly appreciative.

“Whatcha reading up on?” Duo asked without looking up from his textbook.

The sound of his voice brought me back from the dark places my thoughts had ventured.  I let out a breath and felt the tension in my chest ease.  It was on the tip of my tongue to say “Nothing,” but this wasn’t nothing.  This was important.  But it wasn’t a topic I thought we could just come out and discuss.  Not even through text messages.  So, how to get Duo to read what I had read?  That would be the first step.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I replied: “Sex.”

His sock-covered feet, which he’d been kicking in the air, stopped moving.  “Really?”  He looked up at me, his gaze speculative and slightly hungry.

“Ja,” I told him, wondering what exactly he was hungry _for._  He’d bought condoms that he was in no particular hurry to use.  Had he bought them because he’d thought that was what I wanted?  Or had he changed his mind about heading in that direction?  Perhaps I really had given him a skrik in the shower the other day when I’d touched him there.  Well, there was only one way to sort it out.  Unfortunately, my mobile’s battery was in need of charging, so I’d have to see to that.

I left the computer screen as it was with the various browser tabs open to each website.  I trusted Duo’s natural curiosity to convince him to investigate and I trusted that he cared deeply enough for me to read through the information there.  After that, we’d message each other.  Perhaps by then I’d be able to put my formless anxiety into words.

With yet another subtle manipulation set, I moved toward the bed.  Before Duo could roll onto his back, abandon his homework attempt, and pull me down to join him, I placed a hand between his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his temple.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want him; it was that my balance had been rocked by what I’d just learned and I needed a little space to reestablish my footing.  He probably would, too, once he’d read it.

He sighed, accepting the distance I was insisting on.  I ran a hand down his plaited hair in a silent thank-you before I straightened up, located his phone’s charger cable, and connected mine to it.

I could see that he was disappointed, but he changed the subject readily enough and without any genuine peevishness.  “So, I guess you haven’t been down to the music room since Wednesday?”

“No,” I answered, feeling inexplicably guilty for not taking advantage of the gift he’d given me.  But, considering its cost, how could I?  “Why do you ask?”

He shrugged.  I could tell he was trying to be nonchalant, but he was coiled with tension.  “No reason.”

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Whatever it is you’re not telling me.”

He laughed.  “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific unless you wanna hear me talk for a long, long, long, long, _long_ time.”

He had a point.  “Did you do something to the piano?”

He looked up at me through his brows, smirking.  “If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you go check?”

I huffed out a sigh.  I shouldn’t care.  I couldn’t afford to care.

“You’re only gonna wonder until you do,” he pointed out with far too much relish.

“Right.”  So that’s what I did.

I didn’t know what I’d expected to find – the piano painted pink or perhaps a life-sized cardboard cutout of Duo wearing one of those doff powdered wigs or something equally mischievous – but that certainly wasn’t what I discovered.  I blinked at the items resting on the padded seat of the piano bench.  I sat down and picked up the first book on the stack.  It was a composition notebook with page after page of blank, quintople bars just waiting for notes to be drawn on.  Beneath that was a spiral-bound compilation of Beethoven’s masterpieces for piano, and then the one under that was Mozart, and the third was none other than Chopin.

Surely, Duo’s mother had owned some or all of these works.  Surely, if I looked for them, I’d find them stored in the piano bench or on one of the bookshelves.  So why would he—?  And _when_ had he—?

I startled when Duo waved a pack of new, HB graphite pencils under my nose.  “These might come in handy,” he said quietly, “for when you wanna start writing in your own variations and stuff.”

“My own…?”

“Yeah,” he replied, smiling as he slid onto the bench opposite me, keeping the stack of music books between us.  “Like Wednesday night.  You were ad libbing.”

Now that he mentioned it, I had a vague recollection of fiddling with several passages in _Für Elise,_ adjusting the timing or trying out different chords.  “Oh,” I said.

“I thought you’d like to start with unmarked copies,” he added when the silence continued to stretch out.

I still couldn’t think of anything to say.

He smiled and teased gently, “I don’t have to tell you what the composition book is for, do I?”

I smiled.  “No.  No, I think I’ve got that.”

“So, uh, Happy belated Valentine’s Day,” he said.

“I didn’t get you anything,” I mumbled.

He reached out and threaded his fingers into my short hair.  “You’re here,” he answered.  “That’s like Christmas every damn day.”

I was speechless.

When Duo shifted as if he meant to get up and leave, I asked, “When did you do this?”  His gaze followed my gesture toward the music scores.

“Well, condomland wasn’t my only stop on Wednesday night,” he answered, smirking, “and I put ‘em here yesterday morning while you were futzing with the coffeemaker.”  He set the box of pencils down on the ledge above the keys and held up a finger in a mute gesture for me to hold whatever thought I was having.  “And since I don’t know shit about music stuff,” he continued, reaching for the back pocket of the tatty denims he was wearing, “I gotcha this, too.”

I held out my hand.  He placed a Pocket Music Dictionary in it.

“So now you can look up what the hell a ‘coda’ is without wasting your cell phone battery on another consultation with Wikipedia.”

I snorted and choked, my humor and heart clashing like a salty tide upon immoveable rocks.  “You didn’t have to—” I began.  My voice dried up and blew away when he reached out and cupped my face in his hands.

“Hey.  I’d give you anything,” he told me very seriously.  “It’s my own personal mission to figure out what you want before you have to ask.”

Perhaps that was why I was so surprised, so speechless: he’d acted before I’d even sussed out my own desires.  If only I were so adept at figuring out his.

“Someone’s coming by to tune the piano Monday after school,” he announced suddenly.

My protest was automatic.  “But it sounds fine.”

He nodded.  “Yeah, but I wanna give you the best… my best.”

“I don’t need—”

“I do,” he interjected.  “I don’t wanna go back to being a clueless dumbass, Trowa.”

“You were not a clueless dumbass,” I argued, reaching for his chin and urging him closer.

“Hm,” he replied, his gaze snagging on my lips as I leaned in, “I’m sensing another language barrier here…”

But there were no _physical_ barriers between us and, as far as I was concerned, the others would work themselves out.  I kissed him softly and chastely even as I moved off of the bench and nudged the books off to the side.  I planted a knee on either side of his hips and pushed him back until he was leaning against the piano, his braid snaking over the lacquered finish from the upper register keys all the way down to the lowest.

His hands found their way under my sweater and stroked over my mangled and scarred back.  No one had ever voluntarily touched me there, skin-on-skin.  Once the new guys in the troupe had noticed what I hid under my shirt, they’d been careful not to jostle me or slap my back, acting as if the wounds were still fresh.  But Duo was drawn to my scars and I was doubly sensitive to his fascination with them.

I’d been prepared to wear a shirt at all times.  I would have done so willingly if he’d only pretend that the scars weren’t there: I’d been so sure that revealing them would make him hesitate, would make him see how truly different he and I were.  I’d expected him to realize that I was some other breed of man for having lived in a jungle so different from his.  Someone ill-used and mutilated.  Someone less approachable, less honorable.  Someone… less.

But Duo hadn’t seen me in that light at all.  He – for lack of a better word – _worshiped_ me.  Just as I was.

“Ah, God.  Trowa,” he sighed against my lips, his eyelids fluttering open to reveal a gaze gone dark and soft with desire.

I slid backwards off of the bench, gaining my feet slowly and surely, my need and love for him steadying me.  “Come lie down with me,” I urged on a whisper and gently grasped his arms behind his elbows, ready to pull him to his feet the moment he acquiesced.

“Don’t you wanna make some music?” he asked in a rough whisper, nodding toward the books.

Tugging on his arms and keeping our gazes locked, I replied, “We are.”

He stood.  I clasped his hands and led him backwards down the hall to his room and our bed.  The piano and masterpieces would wait.  Duo was the music of my heart and soul.  What symphony could possibly outstrip the one we created between us with every touch?

Being with Duo was the greatest accomplishment of my life.  Somehow, someday, I’d find the words to tell him that.  Until then…

He gasped out my name as I uncovered warm, bare skin with my scarred hands, explored him with my mouth, revered him with my gaze.  I moved against him as he clutched at me, wrapped himself around me, gave himself to me.  Duo was more than just generous: he was, himself, a gift.  I wasn’t sure that I deserved him, but he was mine.

I’d never had so much before.  An iPod filled with classics and a roll of bills hidden away in my rucksack had been the sum total of my gains as a mercenary.  The pendant I never took off and the mobile phone which had been my tether to him for so long: those things I had feared losing but only because their loss would weaken my connection to him.  Now that I had _him_ … I’d never been so blissfully happy, or so utterly terrified.

“’S all right.”  Duo’s voice soothed me and I realized I was holding him too tightly as we dossed in the aftermath.

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing his bare arms apologetically.

He rolled his head back and grinned at me.  “Now who’s worrying too much?”

I smiled for him.  “Ja.  If you’d known I required this much maintenance—”

He poked me in the ribs.  I twitched helplessly in the opposite direction.  “Huh?  What was that?  Were you sayin’ something?” he teased.

“Goof.”

“Yup.”

When we finally found our way back into our clothes and moved out into the hallway, Duo gently shoved me in the direction of the music room.  “Go play.  I’ll come get ya when dinner’s ready.”

I didn’t want to resist his generosity, but perhaps there was a way to ensure that I wouldn’t be completely – and uselessly – absorbed in the music.  “Bring your homework,” I requested softly, reaching for his arm.  “Sit with me.”

“In the music room?”

I nodded and hesitantly explained, “I lost track of time before…”

“And I came and got you.”

I winced, unsure of how to describe the terror of being so totally consumed by something.

“Ah,” he said suddenly.  “Freaked you out a little, huh?”

“Ja,” I readily admitted, letting out the breath I’d been biting back.

“OK.”

That easily, he was accommodating me.

“I’ll put the mac an’ cheese in the oven and come keep you from disappearing into La La Land _if…!”_   He paused there, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“If?” I echoed.

He stipulated, “If you promise to wear that necktie I picked out tomorrow.”

I smiled.  I had no idea why he seemed so partial to the bloody thing.  “You’ll have to tie it for me.”

“Deal,” he agreed, a mysterious smile curving his lips.

Shaking my head in utter incomprehension, I traced his lower lip and his cloth-covered collarbone before trailing my fingertips down one of his muscled arms.  It was as close to a thank-you as he’d probably let me come.

I took my time acquainting myself with the table of contents in my new music books.  A few minutes later, Duo strolled across the threshold with his book bag and poured himself onto the rug by the bookcase to study.  With him in my line of sight, I had no reason to worry whether or not he needed me.  Of course, I suspected that the truth of the matter was that I needed him.  Especially for this.

I stretched my fingers over the keys and, remembering his soft challenge from the day before yesterday – _“Impress me”_ – I set out to do just that.  This time, when I began to play _Für Elise,_ it flowed forth so easily, as if in the intervening days my subconscious had soaked it up.  There was no logical reason for my hands to recall the order of the keys so well.  Muscle memory was supposed to take hours upon hours of practice.

I didn’t know what this strange ability of mine was, to be honest, but though it still unsettled me, I couldn’t help but love it.  I didn’t become lost in it as I had the first night, thanks to Duo’s presence at the edge of my vision.  The music led me from one note to another, twisting and molding the song this way and that, showing me secrets and hidden paths.

Some indeterminate time later, I heard someone sigh and then felt a warm shoulder lean against mine.  “Damn it.  I shoulda gotten you a digital music recorder instead.”

I blinked and paused, glancing at Duo.  He’d slid onto the bench beside me and was smiling wryly at the unopened pack of graphite pencils and the unmarked music score on the piano’s easel.

I grinned sheepishly.  “Uh, whoops?”

“’S OK,” he reassured me.  “Maybe you’ll warm up to it.”  He tugged on the waistband of my sleep pants.  “C’mon and eat, Maestro Barton.”

I never did manage to make a single mark on the music scores Duo gave me.  He presented me with a digital recorder the next day after we stopped by an electronics store on the way home from the office.  And then he ended up being the one to make sure it was turned on whenever I sat down at the piano.  Just crossing the threshold of the music room pushed every thought to the periphery of my mind, including recording my progress for posterity.  Duo didn’t seem to mind taking over that little duty.

“I’m gonna produce a record with these,” he informed me when I asked what he was planning to do with the however many gigabytes of music files he was going to end up collecting from me before the week was out.

“And what do I get out of it?”

“Fame, wealth, fangirls—”

“Not good enough,” I told him, looping my arms around his waist and pulling him down onto my lap on the piano bench.

“Hm.  I’m gonna need a couple of minutes to think up more incentives.”

In the meantime, I put his fingers on the keys and, as he fiddled his way through a C major scale, I embellished it with a melody and harmony, caging him between my arms as we played.  He giggled like a little kid and then he sighed like one of those aforementioned fangirls when we came to a definitive end.

As I leaned my cheek against his arm, he asked, “Say I offered you the eternal devotion of any fanboy of your choice?”

“Finally a quality offer,” I murmured in acceptance.

He offered me more than I could ever catalog.

After yet another Saturday morning spent at the office – Duo in a conference with Ruthford and the head of the London office and me in yet another grueling and unpleasant orientation session with Septum – he sat me down on the edge of the bed, pulled out his mobile, and texted me.

//I read through those websites you left open on my computer last week.  You wanna talk?//

I answered.  //Ja.//

Borrowing warmth from each other, we sat side-by-side – both of us still wearing our suits – and texted back and forth.  The discussion would have been awkward if we’d had to make eye contact or if we’d had to say our thoughts aloud.  It would have been nerve-wracking if we’d been in separate rooms.  Having him here next to me, I felt safe, safe enough to tell him exactly what I was thinking.

//The risk of injury – if one of us got hurt – you might forgive me, but I wouldn’t forgive myself.//

//I know.  Me, too.  I’ve read up on it.  It’s supposed to be really good.  But the first time… that’s kinda up for grabs.  A lot of writers make it sound great, but that’s just fiction.  Fantasy.//

//We’d have to be very careful.//

//I don’t know if I can be.//

//As well.//

//Are you OK with what we do now?//

//Yes.  I don’t give rocks about the rest of it.  I just want to touch you.//

“Me, too,” Duo breathed, tossing his phone aside and climbing into my lap for a kiss.  “Mine,” he insisted between one kiss and the next.

“Yours,” I immediately agreed, falling back on the bed and hauling him down with me, wrinkling our suits.  The tension that had been clinging to us both evaporated and God it was so freeing to have him without worrying about what he wanted and what he thought I wanted.  I only wanted him.

We tore through buttons and shoved at waistbands until our skin met, bare and hot.  This time was rushed, but not furtive.  It was like running through the wind, like diving off of a sheer cliff and into the frothing sea.

And when the passion released us and we were panting into each other’s shoulders, I realized that the top buttons of our dress shirts were still done up and we were both still wearing our neckties.  I tugged playfully on Duo’s and he sat up to caress mine.

“What makes you like it so bloody much?” I teased, my voice still a bit thin.

“It brings out your eyes,” he told me, grinning.

Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that when I hid my emotions from the world in general, I was also hiding them from Duo.  He could see my face clearly now, though, and I let him.  As I looked up at him, I thought about how much I admired him, trusted him, loved him.

He inhaled sharply.  “I love the way you look at me.”

When his fingertips trailed over my cheeks, my lashes fluttered briefly, but I didn’t let them stay closed for long.

“So green,” he murmured, studying the color of my irises.  I was contemplating the varying shades of blue in his eyes when he suddenly whispered, “You’re perfect.”

My first inclination should have been denial, but how could I refute him when the adoration in his gaze made me feel so whole, so treasured?  Maybe I could be perfect for him.  Maybe I already was: scars, jealousy, paranoia, and all.

The month of March opened uneventfully.  St. Patrick’s Day wouldn’t have caused me so much as a speed bump midmonth if not for Duo’s insistence that I wear a green turtleneck on that day, blabbering at me in a completely fake and utterly doff Irish accent as I pulled it on.  “’Twoul’ be a pity if’n yer pinched f’r a lack o’ green.  ‘Tis the luck o’ the Irish yer wearin’ nauw.”

“I liked Talk Like a Pirate Day better,” I informed him, twitching my mussed hair back into place.  “And you’re not wearing that T-shirt outside.”  I didn’t give rocks that his black leather jacket was probably going to be covering it up while we reconnoitered the mall.

“What?” he objected, smoothing his palm over the “Kiss Me – I’m Irish” message emblazoned across his chest.

I reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged it up over his head.  “I’ll donner anyone who takes you up on the offer,” I growled, giving the ball of fabric a threatening shake before tossing it in the general direction of the nearest pile of clean laundry.

“Maybe I’ve only got one recipient in mind.”

He hardly needed a T-shirt slogan to get me to kiss him.  Although, with an invitation like that constantly staring me in the face, I’d be hard-pressed to restrain myself.  Even though we didn’t do the things in public that other couples our age did – we didn’t hold hands, kiss, gesture each other through doorways, or embrace – I was constantly aware of him.  Duo had made a habit of standing just an inch too close to me, bumping our elbows “accidentally”, slinging his arm casually over my shoulders whenever he was moved to persuade me to do something doff, like take a hap of that bloody monstrosity called “Hawaiian Pizza”, and slouching just slightly in my direction whenever he leaned his hip against a sales counter.  No, he didn’t kiss me in public.  We didn’t share long, romantic looks.  I didn’t hold his hand.  But he still chose me every moment of every day.

“The recipient had better be me,” I warned him, running my palms over his bared skin and burrowing my face against his warm, fragrant neck.

“You’re hot when you’re jealous,” he murmured.  His hands slid into the back pockets of my denims.

“Goof,” I told him, smiling.

I smiled a lot these days.  The captain and the guys often commented on it thanks to the photos I emailed them, telling me that American life was good for me, but we all knew it was Duo.  My country of residence had nothing to do with it. 

When our schedules permitted, Duo and I took advantage of the intermittent hiccups in the dull, wet, cold weather to do some sightseeing.  Our digital scrapbook of photos now held a respectable collection of images featuring the two of us in various settings: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Coney Island.  We were smiling in each as we scrunched together into the narrow frame that our cellphone cameras were capable of while either Duo or I held the phone at arm’s length and took the photo.  In each picture, my smile was genuine – how could it not be? – but I wasn’t smiling now.

I hunched over my cellphone as I read through the captain’s most recent email.  I’d sent him a few photos from the weekend before when Duo and I had trekked through Central Park.  Like all the other places, the sensation of being watched had followed me throughout the day.  And, like all the other places, I’d been determined not to let it erode my happiness.  Besides, even if I’d stopped and scanned the area every other minute, it wouldn’t have done any good.  Alerting our shadows to the fact that I’d noticed them would only make them go to greater lengths to conceal their presence from me in the future and I preferred having them right where I could see them.

The captain had noticed them, too: _Still seeing a lot of familiar faces in your photos, Trowa.  You’re making friends.  Take care._

It was always a different face in the crowd, tailing us.  Thus far, their only assignment seemed to be observation, but there was no telling how long that would last.

I stared at the concluding line of the brief email: _Give our best to your china._

“Our best” was troupe code for “backup.”  The captain was offering and I very badly wanted to take him up on it.  Even if my meager savings and recently issued credit card _could_ have brought the captain and maybe Bryce and Martins over here, there wasn’t much they could do.  And, bugger all, there wasn’t much that _I_ could do.  Without a plan of attack, it seemed foolish to call for backup.

Arms slid over my shoulders from behind and I covered my surprise with a deeply drawn breath.

“We missed the skating rink at Rockefeller Center this year,” Duo remarked, reading the email over my shoulder.  I didn’t change the screen or try to distract him from the message or the photos.  I did wonder, though, if he’d pick up on the subtext, if he was ready to face the truth.

He sighed.  “I’m sorry I never met your troupe.  They all seem like good guys.”

“They are,” I agreed, reaching up and grasping his wrist, holding him near for a moment longer when he probably would have pulled away.

He sighed, leaned his head against mine, and apologized yet again.  “I’m sorry we’re not gonna be seeing them.”

“It’s fine.”  Although I couldn’t say I was eager about flying back to London to endure a solid week of meetings and more orientation while trying to watch out for Duo in unfamiliar territory, I knew we had to go.  Duo was needed at the London office and this was his chance to take the trip without interfering with school.  Today had been the last day before a long holiday called “spring break” in which yet another holiday – Easter – had been tucked.  “We’ll spend Sunday at the house,” he’d promised when he’d first mentioned the necessity of the trip.

I wondered if he was thinking about visiting his father’s grave.

“You know how to ice skate?” he suddenly asked me, dragging Rockefeller Center back into the here and now.

I rolled my eyes, smirking.  Where did he think I would have learned how to do something like that?  Still, it was nice that he didn’t take it for granted that I was the sum total of my previous employment experience.  “No.”

“Huh.  We’ll hit it next year,” he promised.  “You finished packing yet?”

I gave him a look.  “I’m a merc.”

“Uh-huh…” he pondered, squinting at me.  “So you’ve been ready to leave since, like, thirty minutes after I mentioned it, but the real question is— Did you pack your backpack or your roller bag?”

I felt my cheeks warm.  I’d gotten nearly done packing my rucksack, which I’d chosen out of pure habit, before I’d remembered the roller bag.  Clearing my throat, I said, “The roller bag.  It’s across the hall in my room.”

“Ah, but you packed the other one first, huh?” he needled, not the least bit fooled by my deliberate omission.

I had no pride when it came to him, so there was no point in lying.  “Ja.”

His arms tightened around my shoulders.  “I get that you were raised a merc,” he breathed, “but that’s not all you are.  You get that, right?”

“Ja.  Ja, I get it.”

It was hard to remember it at crowded, public places like international airports.  Intimidating people with my silent stare just to keep them from jostling Duo was something of a habit.  Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice.  Or, if he did, he didn’t make an issue of it.  But then, I was beginning to suspect that Duo would indulge me even when he shouldn’t.

Our flight arrived on Saturday evening.  We showered at Heathrow and drove out to the house that night.  It was nearly midnight by the time we pulled up to the front door, but Howard answered the summons just as quickly as he had back in December.

“You bring your looker, kid?”

Duo shifted aside, making room for me so I could speak into the comm. device beside the door.  I cleared my throat, leaned forward, and said, “Good evening, Howard.”

“Trowa!  You made it back.”  He sounded genuinely pleased by my tenacity.

“Wild rhinoceroses couldn’t have kept me away.”

Duo laughed and Howard, having finally located and repaired the short in the wiring at some point over the last three months, buzzed us through from the cottage.

On Sunday, I woke to the familiar sensation of damp cloth sticking to my shoulder and a numb arm.  Duo had used me for a pillow again and his cheek bone was pressing on a nerve cluster at the joint.  I hissed as I clenched and unclenched my fingers, working the circulation back into them.

“Hm?” Duo murmured, still mostly asleep.

I nudged him until he rolled over and I could retrieve my arm.  I sat up gingerly and managed a few stretches before the pins and needles made my eyes water.  _Eish!_   That stung.

“Hum?” he mumbled, rolling onto his back and blinking up at me blearily.

“Nothing,” I told him.

He yawned and made a concentrated effort to focus on me.  “Damn.  I soaked your shirt again.  This is getting embarrassing.”

“So long as you don’t get dehydrated, it’s not an issue.”

What was more noteworthy than his tendency to drool on me was the fact that he’d followed me into the guest room without even glancing in the direction of his old bedroom the night before.  That seemed odd to me, although, having never had a room of my own, I wasn’t really sure how to explain the impression even to myself.  So it was just one more idiosyncrasy to be filed away for later.

Duo rolled over and buried his face in my pillow.  “Murf,” he grunted and I decided I might as well take a shower.  When I got out no more than fifteen minutes later, the bedroom was empty and Duo’s suitcase appeared to have been the unlucky recipient of a controlled explosion.  What had he been in such a hurry to get dressed for?

I headed down the hall to his bedroom.  “Duo?” I called at the door.  There was no answer, so I pushed it open.  The room was unchanged from the last time I’d seen it.  Duo was nowhere in sight.  Thinking that the kitchen was the next likely place that would have drawn him, I went down to the ground floor, but he wasn’t there, either.  Right, so, maybe he’d gone to beg some coffee from Howard?  I checked the panel beside the backdoor, but the security system was still armed, so that meant he was still in the house somewhere.

At this point, I would have called his mobile, but I remembered seeing it sitting abandoned on the guest room dresser as I’d left to look for him.  Bugger.  There was nothing for it: I’d have to reconnoiter the premises.  Well, I supposed it was long overdue in any case.

The house was every bit as big on the inside as it looked on the outside.  Or perhaps it was just the fact that I was on a reconnaissance mission that made the hallways seem so befokken long and the closed doors so bloody numerous.  I discovered an assortment of parlors, studies, guest bedrooms with attached baths, what looked like a ballroom, a music room, and a library.  I was halfway through the third floor when I finally opened the correct door.

“Duo?”

He startled, looking up from a pile of papers on a slightly dusty oak desk.  “Hey, Tro.”  Glancing at the clock in the room, he winced.  “Shit.  I meant to just be a couple of minutes.”

“Hm.”  I believed him, but it was fun making him look contrite.  I wandered over to him as he began shuffling papers together.  The matching cabinet beside the desk was open and inside I could see a personal safe.

“Whose room is this?” I asked quietly.  But then, as Duo turned to put the files and documents away on a bare shelf in the safe, I spotted a familiar-looking iPod on the desktop.

When he told me, “My mom’s office,” I wasn’t surprised.

“This is the iPod we found in Laos,” I added, keeping my hands to myself.

Duo nodded.  “Yeah.  I rediscovered it when I was packing the other day.  It needs a new battery.”

I frowned.  “You could play the songs on the computer.”

“Oh, well, I did that.”

“And?” I prompted, not liking how guarded he was being with me.  Duo never made me ask.  Never.

“And nothing.  The songs are… y’know, songs.”  He shrugged.

I did not like that shrug or the caution I could see in his expression.

He made an effort to distract me.  “There was a message written inside the cover over the battery compartment thing.”  He held the bit of plastic up and I glimpsed a series of Egyptian characters printed neatly with black marker, perhaps the same black marker that had been used to scrawl Duo’s name in hieroglyphs on the temple wall.  “It’s the combination to her safe,” Duo explained.

I watched as he reassembled the iPod and tossed it into the safe along with the papers before shutting the door.

The gesture seemed oddly… final.  I was instantly suspicious.  “Are you all right?” I heard myself ask.  The question was ridiculous, but I had no idea how to ask the question that I really wanted him to answer.

He sighed.  I leaned on the edge of the desk as he slumped over the top of it, burying his hands in his slept-in braid.  “I can’t keep secrets from you,” he whispered in defeat.

“I don’t want you to,” I told him quietly.  I reached for his nearest hand, grasped his wrist, and pulled his fingers from his hair.  I interlaced our fingers, giving him something else to hang onto.  “Tell me.”

Still speaking to the ink blotter, he said, “My dad had a private forensics lab investigate the airplane crash that killed my mom and Solo.  There were explosives involved.”

So it had not been an accident.  Bugger and fuck.  I wrapped my free hand around our joined fingers.

Before I could think of anything to say, Duo hissed, “Just what the fuck am I supposed to do with that, huh?  How does knowing that make anything _better?”_

I couldn’t answer that question.  Instead, I asked, “You found the investigation that your father ordered… inside your mother’s safe?”

“Yeah.”

“Why wouldn’t your father have kept it in his own office?”

Duo snorted.  I thought I heard the thickness of tears somewhere deep in the guttural sound.  “Probably because he wasn’t any readier to deal with it than I am.”

“Turn it over to the authorities.”

Duo dropped his other hand.  I watched his fingers curl into a tight fist.  “Can’t.  If they start asking questions about what she was doing in Kamchatka and how she got there… they’re gonna find out about the other stuff.”

I didn’t really see the harm in that.  Perhaps if it was more public, we’d have better luck convincing the police that Khushrenada’d had a motive for ordering the abduction of Duo’s father.

“She died for this.  She and Solo both died for this.”

The tone of Duo’s voice startled me.  Any other man would have rasped it out, the words weakened by despair.  From Duo, they were almost a snarl.

“What will you do, then?” I asked, hoping to distract him from the rage that I could sense swelling inside him.

He let out a long breath.  “Nothing.  There’s nothing to be done.”

I didn’t believe that.  More likely, there was nothing he was willing to do right now.  And, considering everything else he was dealing with, perhaps that was for the best.

After a long moment, I suggested, “Breakfast?”

With a second, deeper sigh, he leaned back in his chair and offered me a wan smile.  “Yeah.”

I stepped back to give him room to stand.  We went through half a pack of Oreos, which we’d purchased at the airport convenience store the night before, and several cups of instant coffee.  Howard found us in the kitchen at nine o’clock, just as I was contemplating the free-standing butcher’s block and my fantasy from last Christmas Eve.

“You boys comin’ to church this morning?”

Duo looked at me.  I shrugged.

“Sure,” he said.  “Give us fifteen minutes and we’ll walk down with ya.”

I’d never been to a church service before.

“Easter Sunday’ll be a good introduction, then,” Duo replied when I confessed to my lack of experience.  As he fiddled with my silk necktie – his favorite – he went over the basics and then wrapped it all up with a somewhat confidence-wrecking “I’ll cue you when you gotta do something.”

But it wasn’t nearly as stressful as I’d feared it would be.  In fact, the ceremony of it was soothing.  It also left me feeling like I’d accomplished something just by playing along.  I was beginning to see why religion had been called the opiate of the masses.  Duo looked more collected now, calmer and more centered.  I couldn’t bring myself to begrudge him the comfort.

We crashed at Howard’s for the afternoon, grazing through sandwiches and crisps as the three of us watched an old black and white movie called “Harvey” which was about a 6-foot-tall, invisible rabbit and his human friend whom everyone thought had gone completely round the bend.

“What was the point of that?” I asked Duo later, as we walked back to the house.

“Uh… the Easter bunny parallel?”

“The what?”

“Oh, man.  Don’t tell me you never heard about the Easter bunny.”  But it was clear that I hadn’t so Duo took up the challenge of trying to explain it to me.

I repeated dully, “The Easter bunny is a rabbit that leaves behind colored eggs for children to pick up?”

“Uh, sort of—”

“Rabbits are mammals.”

“I know that—”

“They don’t lay eggs.”

“Yeah, but—”

“This makes no sense at all.”

“Dammit, just go with me here when I tell you it’s _magic,_ OK?”

I laughed, and then Duo laughed.  By the time we found ourselves in the kitchen, we were both breathless.  Seeing Duo with his face flushed and eyes glittering with tears of mirth, that ghost of desire that had haunted me earlier returned with a vengeance.

Backing Duo up against the wooden butcher’s block, I nuzzled his ear and whispered, “Indulge me?”

“With what?  I don’t have bunny ears or a tail.”

“Thank God,” I rumbled and began placing kisses along his neck, from ear to collar.  He tilted his head to give me more freedom and I took it.

“Eep!” he squeaked when I reached down, wrapped my arms around his thighs and hefted him onto the free-standing counter.

He didn’t ask what I was up to, though, which moved me to confess, “The last time we were here, I wanted you so bad like this.”

Again, he didn’t have to ask; my hands were currently pulling his shirt tails out of his trousers.  I pushed the garments up until his nipples peeked out at me, just below eye level.  I closed the distance between us, glad that I’d calculated the height of the block just right, and feasted on his sensitive skin.

“Ah, Trowa…” he breathed, moaned, demanded.

“I love you,” I mouthed against his sternum, the words just loud enough for him and myself to hear.  No one else.

He wrapped his legs around my waist and my arms went around his back to hold him steady as I nipped and caressed his bared skin, moving downward slowly, nuzzling the dusting of soft hair at his navel.

“Oh… oh God.  Trowa.”

His hands scrabbled at my back, sliding over my suit jacket without finding any traction.  Still, he knew what was beneath so he knew I was no god.  I was only a man, and a scarred one at that.

When I pressed my palm to his crotch, he threw his head back, rocked into my touch, and whined.  Oh yes, he was with me.  I waited until his chin dropped and his eyes opened before I reached for the fastenings of his trousers.  He watched me and I met his gaze as I blindly worked through the barrier between us.  I watched him shiver, saw his eyelids droop, studied his slack lips when I guided him past the layers of fabric.

I measured his length and found him gloriously wet.  Only then did I drop my gaze from his, just long enough to crouch down between his thighs and begin the slow process of taking him in.  When I looked back up, he was still watching me, panting heavily, bracing himself on his arms.

“Jesus.  Trowa.  Ungh—!”

I groaned in reply.  God, it had been weeks since I’d tasted him.  Not that I didn’t like making love to him face-to-face, but I had missed this.  I’d missed feeling him moving inside me, making him bite his lip in a vain attempt to smother his soft screams.  I’d missed this moment of trust: he was inside me and I was keeping him safe and treasured.

In a sudden flash, I remembered his lie from earlier.  The songs on the iPod were important, but he hadn’t said why or how and he was hiding something from me, but here and now he trusted me completely and I felt that abrasion on my heart heal over a bit.  Whatever he was keeping from me, he wasn’t doing it because he didn’t trust me.

“Yes, baby, please,” he panted brokenly, swallowing thickly as his head fell back.

I closed my eyes and took him as deep as I could.  In the darkness behind my eyelids, he became my entire world.  My everything.  Duo…  I moaned and he called out a warning.  He was so deep in my throat, it occurred to me that he might have even felt the vibration.  I moaned again.

He came.

I didn’t taste him until I felt him soften and then, at last, his savory essence reached my tongue.  I was careful to catch him in a handkerchief as I released him, mindful of the fact that we were both still wearing our suits.

“All right?” I asked, straightening up with care as things shifted and readjusted in my pants.

Duo groaned.  He’d fallen back onto his elbows and his eyes were still closed.  “Oh my God.  Trowa…”

I reached forward and slid my hand beneath his shirt to pet his bare, heaving side.  By the time he shakily pushed himself upright, I’d calmed down enough to be capable of helping him down from the block.  He slumped a bit before I caught him and then I held him up while he finished wiping himself off and reassembling his clothing.

“God,” he repeated, leaning his forehead against my shoulder.  “I don’t think I can manage the stairs.  Just stuff me in the dumbwaiter.”

I chuckled.  “Surely, there’s a sofa on the ground floor.”

There was.  Duo was asleep the moment his head hit the cushions.  I sat down beside him, curled around him, and despite my lingering erection, dossed with him.  I woke to the feel of Duo’s fingers drawing patterns on my thigh.

“I totally failed as your boyfriend earlier,” he murmured, watching me wake from only a breath away.  “How about I make it up to you?”

I shook my head, intending to tell him that earlier hadn’t been about coming for me.  It’d been an affirmation of his trust and—

Duo licked my neck delicately before sucking on the skin and, in the process, pressing the edge of his teeth against my jugular.  I groaned.  Bugger and fuck.  If he wanted to make it up to me, it was just easier to let him.

So I did.

Monday morning brought with it a return to reality.  We said goodbye to Howard and headed back to the city.  Although most of the staff was still on holiday, both Duo and I had full schedules.  While Duo got caught up on confidential paperwork at the London headquarters, I was down the hall in a conference call with my guarantor in the States.

I wished fervently that jet lag were reason enough to cancel my weekly meeting with Septum.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t.  If it were, I would have been doing both of us a favor.  After months of grudging cooperation, it was clear that the man barely tolerated me.  My competence and familiarity with the procedures and material only seemed to irritate him.  I was unsure if his hostility was due to me being a mercenary from South Africa or an uneducated lightie he was saddled with when he would have rather offered the position to someone fully qualified.  Probably the latter.

Well.  This wouldn’t last forever.  I’d get my bloody GED, finish this fokken orientation, obtain my sidearm permit, and then serve the remaining two and a half years left of my obligation as Duo’s personal security consultant.  Aside from the occasional report or staff meeting, I doubted I’d see much of the man once I was employed full time.

At least his British counterpart was slightly more tolerable.  I met him on Monday afternoon and endeavored not to dwell on his too-polite and exceptionally reserved manner.  By the end of the day, he’d warmed up to me some and I wondered how much of his initial aloofness had been due to Septum’s sharing of his own opinion regarding my deficiencies.  Still, it wasn’t worth making a fuss over.  Especially when I still had a good deal to learn about British legalities and security protocol before the end of the day Friday.

“This is so Goddamn unfair,” Duo complained as he soaked his feet in the water jets provided by the whirlpool bath of our Dorset Square Hotel suite.  “It’s spring break and we’re _working.”_

Judging by the strength of his pout, I suspected that only over-done sap would suffice.  I sat down next to him, keeping my feet out of the water, and then leaned heavily against his shoulder as I warbled melodramatically, “But at least we’re together!”

He snorted, then laughed, and then looked at me with mirth overflowing.  “I dare you to say that as our plane goes down in flames over the Atlantic.”

I grabbed him around the waist and nipped his jaw.  “Yeow!” he complained just as I growled, “You are not allowed to borrow trouble.”

“How about buy?”

“No.  We’ve no room for additional trouble.  Get rid of your old ones first.”

He smirked.  “Right.  Copy that.”

I’d wondered if we would be heading back to the house before our flight on Saturday, but it turned out that we didn’t have the time.  I couldn’t bring myself to regret that; there were too many dark issues lurking on the property: the forensics report, the iPod, and the grave he had yet to acknowledge.  We left the London office at eleven p.m. on Friday night and crashed the instant we stepped into our room at the hotel.  The following morning was a bit frenzied with final packing and then even more frenzied with highway traffic.  Somehow, we managed to get through check-in and security with an hour to spare.

Although I’d never been in one before Lagos, airports were not my favorite places.  Perhaps the circumstances in which I’d been introduced to air travel had irreparably damaged my opinion of them in general.  It didn’t help that there wasn’t much to do aside from drink weak, scaldingly hot coffee and wander through the shops.  Well, at least I wasn’t obsessing over what not to write in a text message to Duo this time.

I ignored a display of inflatable flight pillows in favor of watching Duo flip through the selection of sleep masks.

“Looking for something in particular?” I asked as he pushed aside one package after another to get a glimpse of the next one hanging up on the sales rack.

“Yeah.  A neon pink one.”

I snorted.  “What for?”

“Hilde.”

“What?”

The corner of his mouth turned up in a self-depreciating grin.  “We have a standing bet that they don’t make ‘em in hot pink.”

“What do you get if you find one?”

He frowned.  “Uh, really cool bragging rights?”

I breathed out a chuckle.  “Just check Google.”  Google was befokken brilliant.

“That,” he informed me, now glaring into the murk at the back of the retail display, “would be cheating.”

Shaking my head in disbelief, I moved down the aisle and found myself contemplating an arrangement of painted glass rings beside a rotating case of wristwatches.  Most of the accessories were brightly colored – eye-wateringly so – with the exception of a few dark voids amongst the chaos.  I picked one up.  It was large enough to fit a man’s finger.  It was dark, swirling with blue and black with the exception of a few speckles of white, like sparkles of humor.

“Whatcha got there?” Duo asked, sidling up next to me and leaning in that telltale extra inch.

“Hand,” I requested, holding out my palm in request.

“Eh?” he said even as he automatically complied.

I slid the ring onto this left index finger.  “That fit?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

I signaled to the clerk and handed over the cash for the ring.  Duo held up his hand and frowned at the accessory as if he’d never seen the like before.

“You don’t like rings?” I asked as we wandered over to a vacant bench near our gate.

“Uh, I dunno.  Never worn one before.”  He plopped down facing the wall of windows that looked out over the tarmac and waved his adorned hand in my direction in a vague gesture meant to coax information from me.  “What brought this on?”

I smiled.  Seeing him wearing something I’d bought for him was strangely satisfying.  I was beginning to understand why he preferred that particular necktie of mine.  And then there was his fondness for playing with the pendant he’d given me all those years ago and which I never took off.

I said the first thing that popped into my head.  “Marry me?”

Duo blinked.  His mouth dropped open.  “Huh?”  He blinked again.  Then he seemed to remember where we were; he glanced around before sliding forward on the bench seat and demanding in a raspy tone, “What, _now?”_

I shook my head.  “When we’re ready.”

He let out a breath.  “Oh.”  For a moment, he just looked at me contemplatively.  As if he were reevaluating my motives.  I’d clearly surprised him and I wasn’t sure if I should feel offended by that.  I’d never made a secret of my intention to stay with him indefinitely.  Wasn’t that what marriage was?  Partners, indefinitely?

I didn’t know what he saw in my expression, but it made him grin crookedly.  He slumped back in his seat and drawled, “Well, then ask me again when you’re ready.”

I was ready now, but there was the issue of my obligation to Maxwell Limited to deal with.  I’d rather not be married to the man who was, technically, also my boss.  I briefly considered Khushrenada and the interrupted quest for that bloody artifact, but I wasn’t inclined to let that greedy, grasping brak get in our way.

“Do me a favor until then,” I requested, settling beside him.

“What’s that?”

Daringly, I brushed my hand against his and rubbed my thumb over the glass ring on his left index finger.  “Keep it on.”

Duo, being Duo, challenged me.  Just as I’d hoped he would.  “Why should I?”

I caught and held his gaze as I murmured, “So you don’t forget to say yes.”

The look in his eyes would have drawn me toward him for a kiss had we been alone.  I could see how badly he wanted it, but this was not the time or the place.  Perhaps his bad sense of timing had been passed on to me.  Perhaps it was contagious.

Inhaling deeply, he glanced away first.  “You might be capable of making me forget my own name at times, but I won’t forget that.”

The promise itself warmed me as much as his rough whisper did.  In response, I reached into the shelter created between our bodies against the back of the bench seat and, unseen by the other passengers moving along the thoroughfare and around the gate waiting area, I collected the end of Duo’s braid, fiddling with it in silence.  It wasn’t just the fact that he allowed me the liberty that created an aura of us-ness – as if our universe was self-contained and only occasionally intersected with some larger dimension – there was also that mysterious little grin of his, as if he’d caught me or he’d let me catch him.  I was never sure which was the case with Duo.

“So, when Hilde asks where I got the ring…?” he began.

I shrugged.  “Tell her the truth if you want.”

“The truth,” he mused, still smiling with secret knowledge out at the planes being loaded up and prepped for flight.  “I’ve been claimed.”

“As well,” I responded, lifting my other hand to my chest and rubbing my fingers over the pendant I wore beneath my shirt.  I know Duo saw the motion because he sighed with equal measures of contentment and satisfaction… and, when I looked his way, he was still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea if the 2004 iPods had batteries (like cell phones) that could be changed out. In this AU they did, because Duo needs to get the combination to his mom’s safe somehow and the inside of the iPod battery cover would be the perfect place for her to write it out for him.


	13. Prom Night, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Trowa POV
> 
> Theme music: "Existentialism on Prom Night" by Straylight Run  
> Prom music: "Liberty Walk" & "Who Owns My Heart" by Miley Cyrus  
> Last dance: "Living Louder" by The Cab

“So, when’s the wedding?”

Duo choked on his cooldrink.  His thumb twitched on the game controller, causing the character on the telly to jump into the air and impale himself on a spike protruding from ceiling of the dark and dank tomb he and Hilde were vicariously raiding from the luxurious entertainment room of the Schbeiker residence.

“Dammit, woman!” he wheezed as his character death-spiraled off screen.  “Does your deviousness know no bounds?”

Hilde grinned unapologetically.

“Hah!” Dorothy scoffed from where she was lounging sideways in one of the room’s leather-upholstered armchairs.  “Absolutely not.  I can vouch for that.”

I didn’t doubt it.

“It’s a valid question!” Hilde asserted as she reached the target of the level unimpeded and collected the gem which had been the focus of their search.  The between-level storyline text popped up on the screen and Hilde wasted no time in turning toward Duo.  She scrunched her face up in an approximation of an old and severely irked man and grumped, “Mr. I-ain’t-wearing-a-ring-unless-I’m-married!”

Duo shifted guiltily, leaning against my leg which was stretched out over the edge of the sofa.  His left hand twitched as if he were about to curl his fingers into a fist. That wouldn’t conceal the glass ring on his index finger, though.  _My_ ring.  I felt my lips curl into a small, very satisfied smile.

Duo objected, “I only said that ‘cuz you were tryin’ to get me to buy one of those dumb mood rings.”

“They’re not dumb.  They really work!”

Duo sighed loudly.  I imagined he was rolling his eyes even though I couldn’t see his face from where I was sitting.  He and Hilde had claimed the rug in front of the sofa and dubbed it their “game flail zone.”  I had not been given permission to slide off of the sofa and enter their territory.  At least Duo didn’t seem to mind the leg that I was pressing surreptitiously against his shoulder.

When he reached for the remote in order to resume the game with a “Right, I’m totally gonna spank your ass on this next level, Schbeiker” she grabbed it back and declared, “Not before you answer my question!”

“What freakin’ question?”  I could tell he was getting genuinely exasperated.  He needed backup.

“Are you two engaged or what?”

I interjected flatly, “All he has to do is ask.”

Dorothy looked up from her fashion magazine and Hilde craned her head around to gawk at me.  Against my leg, I could feel Duo stiffen, but since no one was looking at him, I was the only one who noticed.  I nudged him with my foot, out of sight of both females.

With a start, Duo rallied, “Oh?  And here I was waiting for _you_ to make the first move.”

“What for?”

“Well, you’re older.”

“Probably.”

Duo snorted, tacitly agreeing that the point was debatable.  “And you have green eyes.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“It’s just as arbitrary as age being a factor in who asks who.”

Dorothy sniffed.   _“Whom.”_

Duo cheerfully offered his middle finger for her contemplation.  “Climb it, Tarzana.”

“The only person she climbs is me,” Hilde replied in a tone that only a man on a suicide mission would willingly cross.  She then concluded the conversation by resuming the game and soon she and Duo were bumping and bashing their elbows together while wysing at each other.

“My drop-kick is more awesome than your braid,” Hilde announced, demonstrating the maneuver and sending an animated statue to its doom in the digital abyss below.

“Well, my braid is awesomer than your GPA,” Duo retorted, dispatching two additional creatures.

“My GPA kicks butt!”

“In Podunk, Winnipeg, maybe.”

“Why, you fecal matter of a long-dead dung beetle.  Take that!”

“Dammit, stop that weak-ass shin-kicking shit!”

“Make me!”

“Schbeiker, your pixels are goin’ _down.”_

When Dorothy smothered a giggle, I glanced up from my Geometry textbook and gave her a wry grin.  “They were separated at birth, weren’t they?” I said.

She grinned.  “There’s a betting pool on it.”

I coughed out a laugh.  I had twelve Geometry proofs due first thing on Monday morning, but I couldn’t concentrate on my homework with Duo and Hilde waging World – or was it _word_ – War III on the floor.  More than once, I wondered if I ought to send them off to sit in the corner for a time-out, but Dorothy didn’t seem phased by this behavior at all.  Perhaps it was best to let them get it out of their systems, then.

I had to wonder how long it had been since Duo and Hilde had spent time together like this.  Dorothy’s nonchalant pose spoke of familiarity with previous Sunday afternoons spent staying on the fringes of flail territory.  But I knew for a fact that Duo had not done anything like this with his childhood friend since I’d stepped over the threshold of his apartment the day after Christmas.

For an instant, I felt guilty.  Perhaps I’d been keeping him from accepting previous invitations.  Or perhaps I should have goaded him into spending time with Hilde long before now.  But a larger part of me was filled with pride: I was important.  Duo’s preference for me had shown me that.  Every time he came into the music room to study while I practiced, I knew it.  He would give me what I needed so long as he knew what it was… and provided he was ready to give it.

The glass ring on his hand gleamed briefly, reflecting the lamplight in the room, and I wondered if he was really all right with the idea of marrying me one day.  When I’d asked, he’d seemed genuinely surprised that I wanted him that way.  I suppose that was partly my fault.  He couldn’t read my mind, after all.  Maybe he’d assumed I was joking about marrying him or making light of it.  His startle a few minutes ago when I’d interjected and drawn Hilde and Dorothy’s attention away from him, when I’d had to prod him to play along with my strategy… had he just realized that I was serious?

I stared blindly down at the textbook open on my lap, frowning.

“Hey, Duo’s significant other!” Dorothy called over the ruckus taking place on the rug.

My head jerked up.  “What?”

She smirked, clearly pleased with herself.  “If you need a mental health break, I’m done with this issue.”  She held up a magazine that was clearly aimed at fashion-oriented, teenage females.

“I’ll pass.”

She quirked a brow at me.  “This month’s personality quiz is amusing.”

I gave her a droll look.

She shrugged – “Your loss.” – then plopped the magazine on the floor and pulled a second off of the stack on the side table.

Contemplating the collection of periodicals she was going through, I estimated that there were several months’ worth of issues there.  Perhaps from January, February, March, and the current month.  And more than one type of magazine.  Had she been saving them up, waiting all that time for Duo to claim her girlfriend’s attention for an afternoon?

As guilt attempted to revisit me, I beat it back.  Fokken _no,_ I was certain that I, as his lover, now came first with Duo and I was not going to relinquish that for any reason.  My patience had earned me this position by his side and I was _not_ giving it up without a fight.

And I was sure that, eventually, there would be one.  Perhaps Hilde and Dorothy would not pressure Duo to choose between me and them, but there would be others.  I wondered about Thomas Darlian, the members of the company board, business partners like Sheikh Winner…

When Hilde’s father wandered in and asked what we wanted on our pizzas, Dorothy answered for herself and Hilde, so I replied on both Duo’s behalf and my own.  If the man thought it odd that I spoke for Duo, he hid it well.

When the sliding door rolled mostly shut again – left open a crack to perhaps alert Mr. and Mrs. Schbeiker of imminent disaster – I took the opportunity to gather intel on what sort of resistance Duo and I might one day face.  I caught Dorothy’s attention once more.

“Do the Schbeikers know about you both?” I asked, nodding meaningfully in Hilde’s direction.  Both she and Duo were currently in the midst of a skop, skiet, ‘n’ donner of epic proportions so my softly asked question went completely unacknowledged by them.

Dorothy gave me a sarcastic grin.  “They think we’ll outgrow it once we meet college boys.”

“Ah.”  So their youth and inexperience was buying them some leniency from the adults in their lives.  I wondered if Duo would be treated similarly.  Or perhaps the fact that he did not have a parental figure to protect him from seemingly rash decisions would only draw more aggressive intervention from people who had no business trying to come between us.

The thought made me want to haul his arse out of the house and to the nearest clergyman.  If he were married to me, I wouldn’t have nearly as much to worry about.

Or maybe I would.

Besides, I couldn’t use marriage as a preemptive strike against our enemies.  I wanted Duo to marry me because _he_ wanted to, not because it provided a detour around various annoyances.

Ja, they were simply potential annoyances.  As long as I was honest with Duo and he with me, their campaign to separate us would be unsuccessful.

I returned my attention to Dorothy.  She was skimming an article on one of the glossy pages.  “They didn’t try to keep you apart?”

“Oh, they tried, but we just snuck around behind their backs.”  She grinned at me.  “We spent a lot of time at Duo’s, actually, until they caved.”  Her smile widened.  “It’s been over two years,” she volunteered.  “If they want to believe that Hilde and I will break up once we behold the magnificence of _real men,_ then so be it.”

I snorted, understanding the sentiment completely.  Hilde and Dorothy had history, just like Duo and I did.  They had trust and understanding and a plethora of other things that couldn’t be found one night in a campus bar or a frat party.  Being swayed away from Duo by a stranger was about as likely as me forgetting how to disassemble a pistol.  In short, it was inconceivable.

Still, it didn’t hurt anything to let people think that we were only going through an experimentation phase.  When I _did_ get around to asking Duo to marry me again – when I was sure I was asking him for the _right_ reasons – we were bound to encounter resistance.  Unless we chose not to tell anyone.  The idea had definite appeal: it was no one’s business but ours, anyway.

The warm weight against my leg shifted and I found myself looking into Duo’s eyes, shining with amusement.  He’d turned around and folded his arms over my knee, creating a nice niche for his chin to rest upon.  “What are you thinking about so damn hard that you totally missed your boyfriend being awesome and kicking ass tomb raiding, eh?”

“Made a comeback, did you?” I asked, reaching out to fuss a bit with the flyaways of his usual braid.

“Of course!” he answered, tilting his head into my touch.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dorothy nudging Hilde in the ribs with her sock-covered toes, making the girl twitch and giggle from where she was sprawled out on the rug.  The game controllers had been abandoned.  On the screen, Duo’s character was performing a spasmodic victory dance of sorts.  I took that to mean that he’d won.

And I’d missed it.

“I’m not worthy,” I informed him, only slightly less than halfway serious.

He rolled his eyes.  “Of course you are.  You kick my ass nine times outta ten on the mat.  That beats virtual ass-kicking-awesome every time.”

I grinned.  “More like seven out of ten.”  His wrestling techniques had been improving lately.  We still hadn’t gotten around to using head gear and hand wraps.  Something told me he’d excel at dirty street fighting if given the proper motivation and assurances that I wouldn’t get hurt.

He winked.  “Well, partner, what d’ya say about giving me another chance to show off my prowess?”

“Hm?”

He smirked down at my lap and the mostly blank sheet of notebook paper.  “Geometry.  Bring it on.”

When he started rolling up his shirt sleeves, I huffed out a chuckle.  “You’re offering to do my homework for me?”

“Hey, you came over to this mad house with me.”

Dorothy squealed as Hilde latched onto her foot and tugged her out of her chair.  Duo didn’t even look away to watch the tussle taking place on the floor.

His expression turned wry.  “The least I could do is give you a hand with your homework.”

With Duo looking over my shoulder, I might be able to concentrate.  It was worth a shot.  I shrugged and he clamored up onto the sofa next to me.

By the time the pizza arrived, we’d gotten through eight of the twelve proofs I’d been assigned to write and I felt like I had to be glowing.  Duo had positioned my textbook on his lap, but he hadn’t reached for my notebook or pencil.  He was letting me do the proofs myself, but making very helpful suggestions on how to break the process down logically.  Sally rarely had the time to go through this step-by-step with me when my writing skills were still so abysmally poor.

The doorway to the games room slid open a second time and I tensed automatically.  Duo made no move whatsoever to peel himself away from my side.

“Hey, Mr. Schbeiker,” he greeted, swiveling his head around and reaching for the offered box.

“Good to see you again, Dominic.  How are you doing?”

I listened as they got caught up – Mr. Schbeiker hadn’t been home when we’d arrived at the residence – and I was a little surprised when Duo introduced us before Hilde could make the effort.

“This is Trowa Barton.  Trowa, Bob Schbeiker.  Ask him anything about Harleys.  He’s unreal.”

It was hard to be anything other than relaxed with Duo giving me that warm, intimate smile of his.  He gestured toward Mr. Schbeiker, but his eyes were on me and he was making no secret of the fact that he liked what he saw.  No, Duo didn’t tell Hilde’s father that he was my boyfriend in so many words – I’d assured him that I wouldn’t ask for that – but he got the message across crystal clear.

“Harleys?” I questioned as I returned our host’s firm clasp.  “The motorcycle?”

“Of course!” the man enthused.  Clearly, his passion for the vehicles was capable of overcoming whatever disapproval he might have felt at meeting his daughter’s boy-friend’s boyfriend.

“He has a collection of vintage hogs,” Duo contributed, nudging the conversation until it was inevitable that the man would offer to show us his bikes after we’d eaten.

As Mr. Schbeiker turned toward his daughter to include her and Dorothy in the invitation, I sent Duo a sidelong glance.  “Brilliant and devious,” I approved.

“Who is?” he replied, wide-eyed.

“You are, mos,” I returned and popped open the lid on the cardboard box.

I felt his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers sifting through the hair at my nape that was in need of cutting.  “You told me you didn’t need me to say the words, but you never asked me not to be obvious.”

I didn’t doubt that I’d unknowingly given him a loophole or that he’d found it.  What surprised me was that he’d taken advantage of it.  And, what surprised me even more was that I _liked_ that he’d taken advantage of it.  This was yet another one of the gifts he’d given me before I’d even thought to ask for it.  Maybe he couldn’t say yes to my proposal yet, but he was trying.

Hilde sent her father out of the room with a single slice of Hawaiian pizza as a peace offering.

“We’ll come hunt you down in a half hour or so, man,” Duo called after him.

Mr. Schbeiker toasted him with his pizza slice.  “I’ll be in the den.  You’ve got an hour before the game starts.”

“The game?” I asked as the door slid shut again.

“Football.  The American one.  With the helmets,” Duo said between bites of sausage, pepperoni, and mushroom pizza.

“And the tight spandex pants!” Hilde added.

Dorothy rolled her eyes.  “Which the defensive line should _not_ be wearing _at all._   Ugh.”

I arched a brow at Duo.

Grinning, he explained, “Two-hundred-fifty-pound guys in skintight shorts.”

“Ah.”

When the pizza was demolished, Duo and I offered to take the boxes out to the kitchen.  On the way back, we detoured to the den and Mr. Schbeiker showed us out to the garage where he kept his collection.  I didn’t understand half of what he was going on about, but Duo was nodding and making conversational contributions so I didn’t have to.  I’d worked on Land Rovers and bakkies before, but never anything with less than four wheels.  They looked fast, dangerous, and befokken _wicked._

“Lemme guess,” Duo said as he drove us home several hours later.  “You wanna get a license for motorbikes.”

I grinned at him and a line from a movie we’d watched recently tumbled off my tongue: “Can you hook me up?”

He barked out a laugh.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

Thanks to Duo’s tried-and-true Geometry logic (“Patent pending,” he’d confided with a wink), I got through the rest of my homework while he dealt with dinner.  He put together a salad and beef stew over biscuits.  The salad was only a little wilted.  The biscuits (from a strange cardboard tube that burst open when you banged it on the edge of the counter) were slightly burnt.  The beef stew, spooned out from a tin and reheated on the stove, was perfect.

“Today was awesome,” he suddenly announced as we ate.  “Thanks for going over there with me.”

He’d offered to let me have the apartment to myself, but I’d replied with: “I can finish my homework just as easily at Hilde’s house.”  Even though I’d grossly overestimated my ability to focus in an untested environment, he didn’t seem inclined to rib me over it.

I observed, “You missed Hilde.”

He paused, his spoon sliding through his stew.  “I guess I did.”

The way he said it made me realize that he hadn’t noticed.  I smiled; it was nice giving things to Duo that he hadn’t known he’d needed, too.

“I want a rematch,” Hilde informed him after school on Monday.  The wind blew their conversation right over to me.  It was a nice day – a bit cool but sunny – so I was waiting outside the car, leaning my elbows on the roof and finishing off another check-in to the captain.  I didn’t have any photos to share, but I kept him apprised of our movements.  Just in case. 

Duo spied me from the top of the school steps, smiled, and waved.  I smiled back.  Speaking to Hilde, Duo chuckled darkly.  “Right.  Well, I’m just gonna whoop your ass a second time.  You know that, right?”

Hilde’s eyes narrowed.  “You sound awful confident, Mr. Twitchy Fingers.”

Duo harrumphed.  “Name your terms.”

“If I win, you come to prom on Saturday.”

Duo nearly tripped over the toe of his boot.  “Good one, Hil.  If I say no to that, then you’ll just lose on purpose.”

I frowned.  That remark had made about as much sense as Martins after his fifth cup of coffee.

Hilde scoffed.  “Why would I lose on purpose?”

“Hm.  Good point.  Doesn’t have to be _on purpose…”_

She smacked him on the arm.  “No, you doofus!  You know what I mean!”

Duo rolled his eyes.  They were only a few steps away from the car now.  “You’d lose so that you could claim I took the _opposite_ bet.  I’m not going to that Goddamn freak show, Hil.  End of discussion.”

“Hey, Trowa,” Hilde said.  I nodded to her and then she grasped Duo’s arm and tugged him to a halt when he would have opened the passenger door and slid inside.  “Please, Duo!  This is our last chance to be stupid, irresponsible high school kids who listen to bad music and make idiots of ourselves!”

He blinked.  “You _are_ trying to persuade me to go, right?  Or is this supposed to be Schbeiker Brand reverse psychology?”

“It would mean a lot to me,” she told him quietly, “if you would come.  Please, Duo?  Please?”

Duo’s frown didn’t budge.  “It’s a moot point,” he answered.  “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get ahold of a tux in time.”

Hilde’s shoulders slumped.

Duo sent me an apologetic glance before he turned his attention back to Hilde.  “I don’t get it, Hils.  Why is this such a big deal to you?”

She sighed.  “Because dancing is my thing and this is our last chance to really enjoy it without worrying about whether or not we look like jackasses.”

Duo’s lips tightened.  He sighed out through his nose and looked up at the sky.

“Duo?” she checked, hope adding enough weight to her voice to put a crack in any man’s stoic exterior.

He shook his head.  “I…”  He stopped, looked at me, and then told Hilde, “I’ve gotta go.  I’ll see ya tomorrow, Hil.”

“OK, Duo.  See ya later, Trowa.”

The majority of the ride home passed in silence.  Duo stared moodily out the window and I debated whether or not any words existed in the English language that could result in him _not_ going total gavtol on me.  As we stopped at a robot just a few minutes from the apartment, Duo ground out, “Why the fuck don’t girls just say what they mean, eh?”

“You would have agreed to go to prom if she’d spoken up sooner?” I dared.

He let out a blustery sigh that had him slouching back against the seat.  “The hell if I know.”

For a long moment, neither of us said a word.  Duo fumed in simmering silence and I tried to figure out what to do for him.

And then it hit me.

“Yoh,” I said, suddenly, “is there a sports store around here?”

“Sports?” he echoed, frowning thoughtfully at me.

“Ja.  A place that sells sparring gear.”

Duo gave me a look of pure disbelief.  “Are you serious?”

“Entirely.”

“Let me rephrase that: do you have a death wish?  I’m mad enough to tear a freakin’ eighteen-wheeler apart with my bare hands.”

The signal blinked over to green.  Instead of turning into the parking garage, I kept driving past our building.  “Don’t underestimate your opponent, no matter what,” I told him mildly.

“Christ.  We’re not even on the mat and you’re already giving me lessons.”

“Then give me directions to the store and we’ll call it even.”

“Fine,” he capitulated, and gestured for me to turn left at the next intersection.

By the time I pulled into the car park and shut off the engine, Duo was looking slightly less likely to donner the next person to cross his path.  But it wasn’t until we were well into trying on head gear that I finally made some progress on lightening his mood.  I flushed hotly as he laughed at my attempts to calm my hair into something that didn’t look like I’d just stuck my finger into a power point.  Bloody static electricity.

“Right.  Fine.  Show’s over,” I told him.  He was sagging on a bench near the store’s display of takkies meant for the boxing ring, howling with mirth.

“S-s-sorry!” he gasped.  “It’s just—”  Snort.  “—never seen—”  Giggle.  “—you glare with—”  Deep breath.  “—both eyes before.  Heh-heh.  Um, at the same time.”  And then he grinned sheepishly.

I tried not to be charmed.  I really, truly did.  “It’s a sight most don’t live to speak of,” I growled.

He bit his lip and sniggered.  “The few, the proud, the survivors of the double-eyed Trowa Glare!”

Right.   That _was_ pretty funny.  I snorted out a laugh of my own.  “Patent pending.”

The cashier likely thought we were completely mal the way we’d snort and chuckle every time Duo and I glanced at each other.  I didn’t care.  He was smiling while we headed out to the car, intermittently chuckling as we stowed our purchases in the boot, and shaking his head with amusement when he plopped down into the passenger seat.  I couldn’t have asked for more than that.

Well, except for—

“Duo, you have to hit me like you mean it,” I reminded him.  Given the gear we’d both put on for tonight’s turn on the mat, there was no reason whatsoever for him to worry about causing me serious harm.

“But I don’t mean it.”

And he clearly wasn’t ready to mean it, either.  I sighed.

“Sorry, man.”

“The point of the padded gear,” I told him, “is so neither one of us gets injured.”

“Yeah, I know that.  I just don’t wanna hit you.”

I tried another tack.  “Do you want to hit Hilde?”

He considered it.  “Kind of,” he admitted.

“Well then…”  I gestured him forward.

“But you’re not Hilde.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Thank God for that.  Nor can I do a passable imitation.  You’ll just have to use your imagination.”

He bit his lip, scanning me from head to toe with his gaze.  “Nope.  ‘S not working.  I just keep picturing you naked.”

I burst out laughing.  Right.  Fine.  Maybe he wasn’t quite motivated enough to really show me what he could do.  “Fuck it,” I said, pulling off my padded helmet and sighing yet again when static electricity made my hair stand on end and cling to my face in equally annoying measures.

Duo manfully held back his maniacal laughter, but a few snorts and giggles eked out nonetheless.  An idea for retribution occurred to me and, with a smirk, I crooked a finger at him.  “C’mere,” I murmured.

As soon as Duo moved within range, I unbuckled the chin strap on his head gear and pulled it off with a static-producing flourish.

“Damn you,” he grumped.  Well, he tried to.  His lips were twitching in an effort to hold back his smile.

“Turnabout is fair play,” I reminded him.

“Oh, so we’re playing now, are we?”

“What do you think?”

He shook his head, airing out his braid a bit now that it was no longer mashed against his skull.  “I _think_ this is the start of Round Two.”

So, we wrestled.  It was our usual mat workout.  Although, this time we were wearing hand wraps and mouth guards.  The precautions made us a bit more reckless than usual, but I still couldn’t get a good grip on his braid.  Duo was amazingly evasive when he wanted to be.  I worked with that strength, advising him on various sneak attacks that would kick an opponent’s feet out from under him or put him off balance.

Thirty minutes later, we were breathing hard and drenched in sweat, but I still hadn’t ascertained Duo’s range of offensive skills in hand-to-hand combat.  Well, I knew I could trust him to hold his own defensively and that would have to be enough for now.  The other things would have to wait for a day when he could summon up the motivation to take the drill seriously.

I couldn’t really be irritated with him over it, not when he tempted me into the shower with him for a long and satisfying interlude.  God, the sound of his voice as he groaned my name, the feel of his hands on my skin and his solid heat moving against my body…  I’d forgive him anything.  But he captured my heart for the millionth time when he made dinner: chicken pot pies and steamed broccoli.  He used grated cheese on top of the vegetables instead of that heavy, unpalatable Velveeta sauce I couldn’t stand… even though I knew he preferred the latter.  I helped him stack the dishes in the washer and then we found ourselves on the sofa where I could run my fingers through his still-damp hair as he flipped through the channels until I asked him to turn on the radio.

It was a normal week with one exception.  Occasionally, I caught him looking off into space, drumming his fingers on whatever surface was nearby and clenching his jaw as his lips twisted into a restrained scowl.  By Friday evening, I’d had enough.

“Yoh,” I said, leaning up against the kitchen counter next to him.  He seemed to have forgotten about the plate he was holding in his hands which was destined for the cupboard right in front of his bowed head.  “Talk to me.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out with a long, slow sigh.  “I…”  His teeth briefly scraped over his lower lip.  “Do you still have those prom tickets?”

“Ja,” I answered readily.  So it _was_ Hilde’s words that had been resonating with him all week.  I’d hoped he would have come out and said something long before I’d felt compelled to ask him.  The only reason I’d let him mull it over for so long was I had absolutely no interest in nagging him.  He had enough on his mind with his ever-increasing video conferences with the company staff which had spilled over into his Wednesday afternoons and still commanded the majority of the day on Saturdays.

I squeezed Duo’s arm and then reached around him for the kitchen towel drawer.  I’d secreted the tickets away in there one day after we’d come back from a trip to the grocer’s, siek-n-sat of feeling them poke me through my jacket pocket. 

I held the envelope up and offered it to Duo.  With a deep breath, he set aside the clean plate in his hands and turned to face me.  He took the tickets, swallowing thickly as he did so.

“I think… I ought to go,” he told me thickly.  “Do you…  I mean, is that OK?  You don’t have to come with me.  It’s gonna be a serious pain in the ass and the music’s gonna be bad and everyone’s gonna be spazzing out like space monkeys on moon crack—”

I reached up and pressed a finger to his lips.  He stopped, took a deep breath, and summed up with: “I’ll only be fifteen minutes if you’d rather not come in with me.”

“Do you want me to wait in the car?”

“Of course not!  Dammit, I want my boyfriend and partner to walk in there with me but I need to do this for Hilde and I don’t want to drag you into it.”

I closed the distance between us, resting my hands on his hips.  “You’re not dragging me if I want to go, right?”

It wasn’t really a question, but he answered anyway.  “Er, I guess not.”  His lips twitched into a crooked smile.  “You’d do this for me?”

“I’m doing this for me,” I informed him.

He leaned back against the counter, tilted his head to the side, and asked, “And just what are you hoping to get out of it?”

“I’d like to see my kerel swaai.”

“Swaai?”

I drew him away from the counter until our chests brushed and our hips fitted together.  I didn’t know a single thing about dancing except that there was supposed to be music involved, but I hesitantly moved a bit, swaying from left to right until Duo grinned and leaned into me, taking over the rhythm of our movements.

“We’re dancing right now.  You don’t have to put on a monkey suit for that,” Duo observed.

“Bokkie,” I murmured, collecting his left hand and brushing my fingertips over the ring I’d bought him, “I’m not staying home or sitting out in the car.”

His hand turned in mine and our fingers tangled together.  “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

We weren’t dancing anymore, but I didn’t mind.  I’d gotten my way.  I was going with Duo to prom and he was happy about having me there.

“So, looks like we have plans for tomorrow night.”

“But no tuxedos,” I pointed out.

“Uh… actually.  Maybe we do.  C’mon, babe.”

Duo kept his hold on my hand and led me out of the kitchen, through the living room, down the hall, and stopped in front of the door to his father’s bedroom.  My heart actually tripped and stuttered in my chest.  Did this mean he was ready to face the fact that his father was gone?  Was he prepared to acknowledge the truth at long last?

He cleared his throat, hesitating with his other hand on the door handle.  “Uh, if I remember correctly, he had a couple of tuxes.  I don’t think he’d mind if we… um, anyway.”

As he twisted the knob and pushed the door open, my heart tumbled down to the floor.  Stepping over that threshold felt like I was treading upon his father’s grave, but I wasn’t going to let Duo face this empty room by himself.  Still, after all these months, one would think he’d have stopped acting like his father was away on an extended business trip.

“Here we go,” Duo said a bit loudly, ignoring everything in the room with the exception of the doors against the left-hand wall which he slid open with a little too much gusto.  He wanted to be gone, to be out of this room where memories lurked in every nook and cranny.  I watched as he carefully poked through the suits hanging up until he came to a selection of garment bags.  “I bet these are it.”

When he handed them to me, I took them with no small measure of trepidation.  “Duo…” I began, uncertain of how much I ought to say.

“Let’s see if they fit,” he said brightly, blatantly overlooking my tremulous tone.  I followed Duo out, noting how he firmly shut the door behind him, making sure the latch caught.  He gestured for me to lay the garment bags on the sofa.  I complied and tried not to notice how much they resembled the body bags I’d seen on American telly crime dramas.

Duo handled each with care, gently folding the synthetic bags open to reveal the stark, black jackets and crisp white shirts within.

“Jacket first,” Duo decided, comparing one with tails to another in a more modern style.  “Here,” he said, passing me the more modern of the two.  “Try this one on.  It’s newer.  For going to the opera and gallery openings and stuff.”

I took the jacket and shrugged into it as Duo pulled on the tailcoat.  “And the one you’re wearing?”

“Uh, I think it’s from their wedding.”  He said this as he tugged his braid out from between the back of the jacket and his shirt, flipping it out to swing down his back.  “Does it fit?” he asked, stretching his arms out in front of him to check the sleeve length.

I grunted with misplaced humor.  “Why ask me?”

He blinked and I could have sworn that he’d momentarily forgotten that I’d never been in a position to wear a tuxedo in my life.  “Oh, uh, OK.  Here, lemme see.”

He gestured for me to turn around, which I did.  He then buttoned the jacket for me and tugged on the cuffs.

“Maybe a little short in the arms, but do the shoulders feel OK?”

They felt a little loose, but not enough for me to think it worth remarking upon.  “Ja-nee,” I told him.

The trousers were next and it was beyond strange to be trying on clothes with Duo in the middle of his living room.  The whole evening was surreal.  I braced myself for the moment when Duo realized that his father was never going to wear these clothes again… but it never came.

In the end, Duo assembled our tuxedos, switching out the shirts as the one included with the tailcoat actually fit me better and vice versa.  We sorted out the suspenders.  The tailcoat had a vest.  My tuxedo had something called a cummerbund.  Only minor adjustments were required.

As Duo fussed with my jacket for the final time, scanning me from necktie to my sock-covered feet, he checked, “It’s not too late to back out.”

I turned and caught my reflection in the entryway mirror.  The jacket did look a little loose in the shoulders, but only a centimeter of white cuff was showing at the end of the sleeves, which seemed to end at a location satisfactorily close to my wrists.  The trousers were a little loose in the waist as well, but the legs were long enough thanks to an adjustment in the suspenders.  I stretched a bit and found my movements unimpeded.  Really, that was the most important thing.

“I’m not backing out,” I told Duo and I caught his gaze in the mirror’s reflection.

“OK,” he said.

He looked so sad and lost in that tuxedo meant for a wedding day.  I reached for his hand without turning away from his pale, drawn image.  His fingers clutched mine.  Hard.  Ja, if Duo ever agreed to be my husband, I wasn’t going to put him through this again.  We’d get married in our shorts and T-shirts before I’d ask him to put on another tuxedo.

It was a long time before Duo fell asleep that night.  I knew this because I felt every restless shift, heard every impatient sigh.  After an hour, I gave up on trying to hold him and pet his hair, which normally soothed him just like the back rubs he would give me when I had trouble sleeping.

I was exhausted, but it felt like a betrayal to just roll over and ignore him.  “What can I do?” I whispered.

“No idea,” he sighed out.  “I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

“We could talk.”

“About what?”

“Chopin.  Gun oil.  Whatever.”

He huffed softly at the memory and mulled my offer over for a few very still, very silent minutes.  “I don’t know what to talk about,” he said, jarring me from my headlong tumble into slumber.

I was becoming sleep-deprived.  That was my excuse for daringly suggesting, “Your father?”  The moment I heard myself say the words, I held by breath and waited.

After a too-long moment, Duo whispered, “No.  Not right now.”

I sighed gustily.  “Promise me you won’t put it off when you’re ready.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I promise.”

Well, that was something at least.  I wracked my brain for a new topic and came up with something that might be innocuous enough.  “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were on the swim team?”

“Hm?  Oh.  Damn, well, it seemed kinda stupid,” he replied.

“How so?” I asked, baffled.  He reached for my hand in the darkness.

“You were out there dodging bullets and risking your life on a daily basis.  So what if I was, uh…”

I shifted closer to him.  “What?”

“Shit.   This is embarrassing.  It’s just… you’re totally ripped.  And I could tell.  That night, back in Egypt, I wanted…  I just wanted to be as strong as you.”

Oh God.  I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so shocked.

“I was totally jealous of you.  But I suck at ball sports.  I guess I could have tried out for track and field, but…”

“Duo,” I rasped, absolutely gob smacked.

“I think it was all that Egyptian sand that pushed me in the direction of the swim team,” he remarked with an air of finality.

I absorbed this soundlessly; I was still stuck on the utterly astounding fact that he had envied something about me.

“Yeah,” he continued.  “The dust swung me in the complete and total opposite direction.”

“Duo,” I tried again.

“Huh?”

I shook my head.  God, where to begin?  “You snuck up on me while I was cleaning my rifle.”

“Hm?  Oh, yeah.  I did, didn’t I?”  I could hear him smiling in the darkness.

“Ja.”  I didn’t have to explain what an accomplishment that had been, did I?  “You did _not_ need to be jealous of me,” I told him, “for any reason.”

“Oh, I dunno.  There were the guys in your troupe, too.  Never had a big family.  Do you miss ‘em?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted.  Especially when Duo and I were in town and I could feel a constant and steady gaze on our every move.

He sighed.  “Maybe we could visit Africa this summer.  If you want.”

“We’ll see,” I temporized.

There was another moment of silence.  Contemplative this time.

“I respect you, y’know,” he offered suddenly.  “A lot.  Have from the moment I saw you.”

I released a shaky breath, again robbed of words.

“Although, yeah, you were a little intimidating at first.”

I choked in silence.

“That’s why I had to drive that one day.  Y’know, to show off a bit.  Or try and counter-balance your awesome.  Or something.  You get what I mean, right?”

I doubted I would _ever_ completely understand Duo, not his motivations or his logic.

“Are you asleep?” he checked softly.

I could have said nothing and let him think so.  In truth, I didn’t really know what to think, what to say.  Duo had a way of pulling the world out from under my feet.  “I’m awake,” I answered.  “Stunned.”

“What’s there to be stunned about?”

How to explain that his respect felt different to me than what I’d earned from the members of my troupe?  How to explain that I’d never felt this way before, not even when the captain had seen me off and sent me on my way out of Africa and toward Duo?  “You,” I told him.

“Me?  I’m not all that special.”

“On that point, let’s agree that we disagree.”

“Hm,” he nearly chuckled.  “I guess.”  He thought about it for a moment and added, “I like that you think I’m special.  It feels… nice.”

“Ja,” I managed to say in reply.  “I know what you mean.”

Words were unnecessary after that.  I lifted our joined hands to my lips and kissed Duo’s fingertips, his knuckles, his wrist.  He slid closer and I looped an arm beneath him, drawing him near until he was a warm, solid weight against me, until I could feel his breaths pushing his chest out with every inhale, until he pressed his nose against my neck, murmured my name, and slid our joined hands beneath the hem of my shirt.

When he leaned over me and turned on the light, I was treated to the sight of him stripping tonight’s “Rocket Man” T-shirt off before tugging mine up to my collarbone.  It had been a long day and I was exhausted, but I was also riding the tide of wonderment and awe from our conversation and, with Duo taking care of us both, I had no desire to stop the proceedings.  I was asleep moments after coming in his hands.

I opened my eyes to an empty expanse of mattress the next morning and found him in the kitchen scrolling through something on the screen of his mobile phone.

“Did you sleep last night?” I asked when he looked up and smiled a good-morning at me.

“Yeah.”

But the dark shadows under his eyes and the pallor of his skin told another story.  However much rest he’d gotten, it hadn’t been enough.  “What do you want to do this morning?  Afternoon?  Whatever,” I asked, pouring some coffee into the cup Duo had set out for my use.

“Um, I dunno.  Go see a movie?”

“At the cinema?”

He nodded.

I sat down across from him and stretched my legs out under the table so I could tangle our limbs together.  I could guess from his stubborn expression that he wasn’t interested in talking about our plans for this evening, or the tuxedos we’d be wearing, or the man they’d once belonged to.

So that left us with his cinema suggestion.  Well, what could it hurt?  I’d indulge him, I decided.  “Which film?”

We went to see a story of revenge set in 18th century Japan.  As the tale unfolded, a chill shot through me: a Japanese lord, provoked into drawing his sword in the emperor’s palace and then forced to commit ritual suicide for that unforgivable transgression; a campaign of madness that put me in mind of Hamlet as the dead lord’s ever-loyal general endeavored to avenge his master’s fate; a bloodbath in which every member of the instigator’s family was slain; and finally the last stand of the lord’s men.  Those who hadn’t been killed in the fighting suffered the same fate as their former master.  The film ended with a note about how all forty-seven warriors were enshrined in Tokyo, Japan.

I shivered in my seat despite the fact that I was sufficiently warm.  I felt cold and alone despite the fact that Duo was seated next to me.  Our shoulders were touching.  There was no reason for my stomach to tighten itself into a knot.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Duo proposed and I followed him out of the cinema.  As I did, I felt as if I were leaving something vital behind, as if the knife had fallen out of my ankle holster or my gun was out of bullets.  Never mind that I no longer carried weapons with me wherever I went.  Or maybe that was the problem: after all these months, their absence had finally driven me past the point of paranoia.

Duo drove us to a quiet, little diner where he ordered a veritable mound of cottage fries and a banana split. 

“Dive in, man,” he invited, gesturing to the pile of starch fried in lard, “or all the crispy ones’ll be gone.  Nothin’ worse than soggy fries.”

That was debatable but, instead of arguing, I scanned the terrain for an appetizing chip.  I guess my response was less enthusiastic than Duo was hoping for because he plucked up a random wedge and, aiming it in my direction, supplied the sound effect of a plane engine as he “flew” it toward my mouth.

Oh God.  What a goof.

Flushing hotly, I opened my mouth accommodatingly… just as the potato plane encountered difficulties and swerved off-course.  I dived after it, snapping my teeth.

“Full power to thrusters, Scottie!” Duo ordered in an authoritative tone and then switched to something that sounded like his Irish accent, “She cannae take mooch moar o’ this, Captain!”

I clamped a hand around Duo’s wrist and chomped down on the hapless, flying, invisibly manned potato slice.  Considering that it had also been fried and salted, I was sure I was doing it a service by putting the thing out of its misery.

“Dude.  You just munched the U.S.S. Enterprise.”

“In my defense, it looked like a cottage fry.”

“It did, didn’t it?  But hey, it’s cool.  Captain Kirk and the crew jumped into an alternate dimension at the last possible minute where Trowas are allergic to potatoes.  Bwhahaha!” he crowed, lifting another chip from the plate for my inspection.  “Captain’s log, star date one-one-five-three.  Continuing our scan of the Lunch Quadrant en route to the Gastric Nebula—”

“Where are the thrusters?”

“They’re invisible.”

“And the main bridge?”

“Camouflaged.”

“Why?”

“They’re hiding from the Klingons in the ice cream.”

“The what?”

Duo, in the process of “flying” the fry through the air again, lowered his arm.  “Man.  Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Star Trek.”

I said nothing.

“Well?”

“You told me not to tell you I’ve never seen Star Trek.”  Whatever that was.

Duo shook his head and sighed.  “Inconceivable.”

He endeavored to explain it to me: a pseudo-military, multi-cultural crew which pilots a space craft around the cosmos so that the captain of the ship can be seduced by as many alien women as possible while the first mate uses his powers of logic to save the day, the ship’s doctor stands around looking creepy, the engineer continually warns everyone that the  thrusters are one more asteroid impact away from exploding, and the chief communications officer forgets to put on her trousers before reporting to work on a daily basis.  But what I couldn’t get beyond was—

“Why do all the aliens speak English?”

“Universal language.”

“But why _English?”_

Duo rolled his eyes.  “Because ‘oh, Captain, what a big laser gun you have’ just didn’t translate in the 70s.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, wiping my palm over my face as if I could erase that moment from my memory permanently.  I did not need that association connecting itself to Captain Barton.  Absolutely not.  “That was wrong.  On so many levels.”

He sniggered.  “Here, have some ice cream.”

“No.  There are Klingons in it.”

“Oh, no, they’ve all been beamed off and taken prisoner by the Romulans hiding in your napkin.  Here,” he said and scooped off a massive portion of vanilla ice cream and butterscotch sauce.  When he turned the spoon in my direction, I leaned forward and captured the offering before it could encounter dimensional shift trouble – or something equally doff – and drip onto the surface of the table.  I took care to clean the spoon thoroughly before releasing it.

“Uh…” Duo said.

“Ja?”

He cleared his throat.  “Have some more ice cream,” he urged.

“Why?”

“Because watching you eat it is, uh, really doing it for me.”

Grinning evilly, I braced my elbows on the Formica table, leaned forward and rumbled, “Then bring it on.”

I ate ice cream from Duo’s spoon until my tongue was numb.  Thank God we’d been given a corner booth.  I was more or less certain that the looks he and I were exchanging were not meant for audiences under the age of sixteen.

When only cold, soggy cottage fries were left and the ice cream had melted into goo, I purred, “You want to get out of here?”

“Hell, yes.”  He tossed me the keys.  “I’ll take care of the check and meet you at the car.”

Our building was only twelve minutes away.  I confirmed this on the ride back, counting off the seconds in my head.  Perhaps Duo had been doing the same during the perfectly silent ride.  When we finally entered the apartment, he tossed his jacket aside and swept past me before I could get a grip on him.  I pursued.  He turned.  I reached for him and, in the next instant, I was on my back on the living room carpet.  He’d taken me down so fast I was having trouble reconciling my prone position with where my mind thought I still out to be standing.

He pinned me to the floor and smirked.  I fought back, rolling him beneath me.  His victorious grin told me that I’d played right into his hands: he had me exactly where he’d wanted me.

In which case, I was wasting time.  I tore through his clothes and he grappled with mine until we were both bare, panting into each other’s mouths, and rocking together.  His legs wrapped around my hips and he braced himself against my shoulders with his arms.  The bottle of lotion was in the bedroom, but he didn’t suggest that we stop so he could go fetch it.

I pressed my lips to his neck and his hands smoothed down my chest, over my hips, and came to rest on my arse.  I groaned when his fingers tightened, his nails biting into my skin.

“Jesus.  Trowa,” he gasped.  “So hard for you.  Since the restaurant.  And that damned spoon.  Nugh…!”

God, he moaned the sexiest fokken things when he was about to come.  I reached between us and watched as his eyes rolled back into his head, his lashes drifted shut, his chin tilted back in surrender.  The sight of him giving himself over to me was my undoing.  We came at nearly the same time.  But, given the amount of practice we’d had at this sort of thing, I shouldn’t be surprised.

My arms shook from the strain of bracing myself over him, but I didn’t relax.  “God, Duo.”  I wanted to say more, but I just didn’t have the words.

He took a deep breath, swallowed, licked his lips, opened his eyes, and giggled.

“What?” I asked, too lethargic to try to imagine what had tickled him now.

“Y’know, this is how prom night is supposed to end, not start.”

“In a press on the living room floor?”

“Uh, no.  Just the sex part.  With your date.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing I agreed to go with you.”

Some worry or other flitted across his expression.  Before my heart could do more than stutter, he grasped my shoulders and, with complete sobriety, asked, “Trowa, would you go to prom with me?”

And then I realized what he undoubtedly had: he’d never asked me.  Not properly.  But he was asking now.  I smiled.  “Of course I will.”  And then I shifted against him, smearing the mess between our bellies around a bit more.  “You think I’m going to let you end up like this with anyone else?”

“Don’t want anyone else,” he retorted, pushing at my shoulders until I sat up and he was straddling my crossed legs.  “Just you.”  He breathed the words against my mouth, squirming against me and kissing me deeply until I removed my hands from his hips, leaned back on my palms, and watched him ride my lap with increasing fervor.

I couldn’t not match his passion with mine and soon I was coaching him with my voice, asking him to move harder and faster against me, relishing the heat of his breath against my neck and collarbone, drowning in the irresistible pull at the base of my spine as we rubbed against each other, hot and slick from our first release.

When he leaned back, arched his neck, and watched me from beneath half-closed eyelids, I knew he was close.  I reached between us again and his hand met mine there.  I hissed with pleasure when his fingers tightened around me and he moaned when I grasped him.  I came only a second before he did.  And then I collapsed onto my back on the carpet, dragging Duo down on top of me.

“Oh, wow,” he said, breathless.

“Hm,” I agreed.

“And… ow.”

“Ow?”

He glanced down at his right knee.  “I think I have rug burn.”

I confirmed this unfortunate diagnosis in the shower we subsequently shared.  “Do they hurt?” I asked, regarding the raw-looking patches of skin.

“Hell, yes,” he hissed.  And then he grinned.  “Worth it, though.”

I was glad he thought so.

“Plus,” he added, “I’ve got two more mementos.”

Ah, yes.  The one I’d given him on his thigh had long since healed.  Still—  “I’d prefer to see you with your skin intact,” I told him, reaching for his left hand and fiddling with his ring.

Our shared shower was brief this time and I insisted on helping him bandage his knees afterward.  He sat on the bathroom counter with a towel wrapped around his waist while I worked naked.

“Jesus, Trowa.  Not that I’m complaining—”  He hissed as I gently dabbed ointment on the raw patches.  “—but don’t you want a towel or something?”

“No.  I’m getting back in the shower just now.”  And if there was one thing I’d come to hate since coming to New York, it was a cold, damp towel after a hot shower.  Well, that and cold, grey, snowy days.  They were bloody claustrophobic in their oppressive misery.

“There,” I informed him with a nod of satisfaction at the dressings I’d just finished applying.

Duo stretched out his legs slowly and inspected his knees.  “You do good work, babe.”

“I try my best.”

He looped his arms around my waist, leaned in, and kissed the side of my neck.  “No one’s ever taken care of me like you do.”

He made it sound as if I were proficient at it, but I knew I wasn’t.  Not in the slightest.  Besides, his mother and father must have cleaned up his scrapes and cuts for him countless times.  I couldn’t possibly compete with that level of care.  But the tone of his voice was suggesting otherwise.  I just couldn’t comprehend it.

When he shifted to slide off the counter, I stepped back, making room for him.

“I’ll put your tux in on your bed,” he said.

“What time are we leaving?”

He shrugged.  “When you’re ready.”

I scowled at him.  “That doesn’t translate into merc time.”

His grin was wry and crooked.  “Thirty, forty minutes.”

“Copy that,” I said, kissed him, and got back in the shower.  Twenty-five minutes later, I found Duo in the living room, perched on the arm of the sofa.  He was already dressed in his father’s wedding tuxedo.  His hair was pulled back into that series of cascading ponytails again and I thrilled at the sight.  He’d implied that he only wore his hair this way for special occasions.  I liked the indication that tonight – going to prom with me – was a special occasion.

“Yoh,” I said, coming to a stop next to him.

He glanced up and grinned.  “Hey!  You clean up good.”

I smiled.

“Where’s your bowtie?”

I pulled the scrap of black fabric out of my pocket.

“Oh.  You want me to tie it for you now or after we get there?”

“After we get there.”  Not that wearing a bowtie seemed any more confining than a normal necktie, but Duo’s was so precisely done that just looking at it made the skin on my throat tighten in sympathy.

“OK,” he said, standing.  “I guess we’re ready.”  Despite the words, he didn’t move toward the door.  He frowned in thought.

“What?”

“Feels like we’re forgetting something.”

“The tickets?”

He patted his inner jacket pocket.  “Right here.”

I couldn’t think of anything else he might need especially for tonight.  He had his wallet and mobile phone, of course.  That was a given.

“Ah ha!” Duo crowed suddenly, snapping his fingers and looking immensely proud of himself.  “Pictures!  Duh!  It’s, like, tradition.   You can’t go to prom without having a photo of you and your date taken for the family album.”

I raised my brows at this news, but I suppose it made sense, especially if prom really was a coming-of-age event.

Duo pulled out his mobile and frowned at it.  “This isn’t gonna work.  We’re gonna need a real camera, with a timer and a tripod and shit.  I bet my dad still keeps his in—uh…”

I blinked as Duo’s voice suddenly caught.  I gave him my full attention so I saw it when his lips trembled open and his eyes unfocused.  “Duo?”

“—in—in the—closet—in—”

I grasped his shoulders, narrowly resisting the urge to shake him.  What in the bloody hell was this?  I’d seen his darkness but this—!  This was something else.  Duo’s voice faded into nothing.  A second passed and then another and another until I thought the silence would crush me where I stood.  I heard myself ask, “Shall I go and get it?”

Still looking _through_ me, Duo began to shake his head.  “No…” he whispered.  “No.”

His shoulders tensed beneath my hands and, looking down, I saw his fingers curl in.

_“No.”_

He was shaking now, his fists so tight his knuckles had gone white.

_“No!”_

His snarl brought my head up and then I saw it: all the pain and the rage he’d been keeping inside all these months was right there in the grimace of anguish twisting his face.  I didn’t know what to do.  _Help me help you,_ I didn’t say.  “Duo—”

_“No, Goddamnit, he’s not dead!”_

I hadn’t said he was but I suspected that Duo was beyond hearing me, beyond listening to anything except the fury bursting out from inside him.

“He should be here!” Duo very nearly screamed.  “He should fucking be here taking a million and half Goddamn photos, making us late for that fucking dinner and embarrassing the hell outta me and—and—and—!”

And then he did scream.  It was a primal wail that eked out between his gritted teeth.  He squeezed his eyes shut, but I saw no tears.  Not a single one.  His hands grasped my forearms near my wrists, but he didn’t shove me away.  His breaths were coming in booming, sobbing pants.  He was shaking.

“That fucking bastard had no right – NO RIGHT! – to take him away!  _NO RIGHT!”_

Oh, bugger all.  He was thinking about that bloody bliksem Khushrenada.  I wrapped him up in my arms tightly, anticipating what would come next.  And come it did.  In the next breath, he was fighting me, struggling in my grasp, but I was not about to let him go.  If I did, I didn’t doubt we’d both end up in hospital before the night was out.  This way, he couldn’t get enough leverage to do any serious damage to either me or himself.

He thrashed and punched and kicked.  There were curse words and incoherent screams, rash oaths and promises of retribution.  I’d never been squeamish, but the threats he snarled, in great detail and with relish – as if he were savoring the very skin he was so eager to peel from Khushrenada’s flayed and broken body – made me cringe.  His rage crested and ebbed and then crested again.  Each time he added more bruises to my arms and back, my shins and feet.

Thank God he hadn’t put his shoes on yet.

But he was _not_ attacking my head or biting me and I took that as a good sign.  He didn’t want to kill or maim _me._   He wanted Khushrenada; I was just in his way.

 _“Let me go, Trowa!_   LET ME GO!  I WANT HIS GODDAMN MOTHER FUCKING HEAD ON A HOT POKER!”

He clawed at the slightly loose shoulders of my tuxedo jacket.

“I WANT HIS SPLEEN PULLED OUT THROUGH HIS NOSE WHILE HE’S STILL BREATHING, NO, _SCREAMING AND I WANT HIS CHEST CRACKED OPEN SO HE CAN WATCH ME PUSH SEWING PINS INTO HIS FUCKING HEART—!”_

Oh, God.  All this pain.  I’d known he was hurting.  I’d been waiting for the explosion.  But this was well beyond my ken.  Perhaps it was cruel to both of us, but I stayed silent.  I didn’t try to talk him down.  I didn’t try to calm him.  He needed to bleed it out – the wound had to be lanced or the infection would kill him.  It was bad enough that he’d let it fester for four fokken months.  It was bad enough that I might have aided him in doing that, distracting him and tempting him into burying his grief so deep that it could only surface in volatile, volcanic explosions.

It took all my strength to keep us both upright, to not topple with him to the floor.  He raged until his voice was hoarse, until his threats became whispered hisses interspersed with choked sobs, until his fisted hands no longer beat at my shoulders, until his shaking arms wound around my neck and his knees sagged.

When I moved us both to the sofa and pulled him down with me, he climbed onto my lap, buried his face in the side of my neck, and wept.

Oh, God.  I ached for him.  I wished I could understand how he was feeling, but I couldn’t.  I’d never lost a father that I could remember loving and Duo had loved his.  Unconditionally.  I leaned my cheek against his fragrant hair, petting his head and arms and back.

“I’m not ready,” he whimpered between shuddering, hitching breaths.  “He’s gone, but I’m not—not ready.”

I doubted any child who loved his parents would ever be ready to say goodbye to them, to let them go.  The universe was asking too much of Duo if it expected him to gracefully relinquish the man he’d loved and looked up to his whole life.

“Say something,” he rasped and it took me a moment to realize that he was asking me to speak.

“I love you,” I told him.

He started crying again.

I didn’t tell him to hush.  I didn’t tell him it would be all right.  I told him, “I’m here.  I’m yours.  I’ll never leave you.”

But, if I were being truly honest, I would have said that I _couldn’t_ leave him.  God help me if he ever stopped wanting me.  I had no idea what I would do without him.

I suddenly understood why he’d wanted me to choose another career path for myself, something new.  I couldn’t be Duo’s personal security guard forever.  As tempting as it was to lose myself in him, I knew he wouldn’t want that.  And, thinking back on it, hadn’t I once vowed to be my own man?  To stand on my own?  To be Duo’s equal?  To make him proud to be my friend, my partner, my lover?

As I held onto him, as I gave him my voice and touch and body as shelter from the storm within him, I realized that I didn’t need a fokken GED or a bloody gun permit to be his equal.  He’d made me his equal when he’d asked me to come to Vientiane, when he’d trusted me with his safety, his body, and his pleasure.  And now he was relying on me for his sanity.

I tightened my arms around him and dared to rock him a bit, as if he really were a small child in my arms.  “I’ve got you.  I’m here,” I whispered into his hair.  “I love you.”

He sobbed quietly, but I didn’t stop reminding us both of what we meant to each other.  “I’ve got your back, my china.  I’ll never let go.”

“Someday you will,” he gasped against my lapel.  “Someday you’ll—you’ll _die_ – everyone _dies_ – and—!”

Bugger and fuck.  His fears were riding him so hard I was almost afraid I’d see welts on his back from the metaphorical whip lashes he was taking.

“There’s an answer to that, you know,” I murmured, desperate to give him something other than empty, rubbish-bin promises.

“Huh?”  He sniffled.

I pressed my lips to his temple, already regretting that line of thinking.  Was I seriously suggesting that Duo ought to die first just to save himself from the fallout of my passing?

“Oh,” he said with soft finality; he’d caught my meaning before I could think of an alternate explanation.  “Do you promise?”

“Promise to do what, exactly?” I made myself ask, squeezing the words up around my throbbing heart and out of my numb mouth.

“Outlive me?”

I sighed.  He would ask that of me.  Of course.  “Duo, what part of ‘I am never leaving you’ is giving you so much trouble?”

“Everyone else has… left.”

I clutched him tighter.  “I am not _everyone.”_

He chuckled briefly into my soggy collar.  “No, you’re not.  The one and only Trowa.  Unique.  Irreplaceable.  I need you like whoa.”

“You’ve got me like whoa.”

He snorted, giggled, and then sighed, relaxing against me completely.  A long moment later, he sniffled wetly.  Anticipating his next request, I scanned the nearby vicinity.  I was ready for it when he ventured hesitantly, “Uh, Tro…?” and reached for the tissue box on the side table.

“Ready for these?” I teased him, holding up the box.

“I dunno if I am but, dude, you do not want to see what I did to your jacket.”

Technically, it wasn’t mine, but I didn’t mention that.  Instead, I said, “So long as you’re not dehydrated, it’s not an issue.”

Duo blew his nose – loudly and with a short symphony of squeaking and honking – and then mopped up my collar and lapel.  He didn’t offer to get up off of my lap and I didn’t offer to let him.  We dossed on the sofa, just breathing, just being warm and alive together.  It was a long time later when Duo wiggled against me and asked, “What time is it?”

I lifted my arm and looked at my watch.  “Nearly ten.”

“Well, we missed dinner.”

“Ja.”  Our stomachs had been growling out a nonsensical conversation for some time now.

“But we can still make the dance.”

I jerked my chin back and looked at him.  His hair was mussed, his eyes bloodshot, his face pale, his nose red and slightly swollen.  He looked like he’d been smacked face-down in a hippo bog and then dredged back up.

“Do you still want to go?”

“Not really,” he admitted, “but I need to… get away.”  He pressed a fist to one eye and bit his lip, pushing back the next wave of tears and misery.  He wasn’t done grieving for his father, not by a long shot, but he was wrung out.  “I need a break.  I’m… this is my limit.”

That I could understand.  “Would you like to drive?”

“I’m not sure if I should.”

“If you want to, you can.  I’ll keep you on the road.”

He chuckled.  “Had much practice with passenger-seat driving?”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to trek to Egypt from Ethiopia?”

“Uh… no.”

I smirked.

“But I’m guessing that’s somehow supposed to prove that you were the man when the truck driver took a nap behind the wheel.”

“Oh, I’ll keep you from dossing, Bokkie.  I guarantee it.”

It turned out that my skills at “passenger-seat driving” were not necessary.  After washing his face, Duo looked well and truly alert.  We drove through a takeaway place called Taco Bell and ate on the road.  I didn’t ask Duo if he really thought eating tacos while driving and wearing tuxedos was a good idea.  My jacket and shirt had already been used as a handkerchief.  What was a food stain in comparison?

We arrived at a golf country club just before eleven o’clock.  Duo had to circle the car park a bit before locating a vacant space.  He turned off the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt, turned on the dome light, held out a hand, and said, “Bowtie.”

“Right.”  I’d forgotten about the bloody thing.

I held still while he tied it for me, watching his expression.  The drive seemed to have helped him clear his head out even more.  He looked to be in a good mood.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked.  “Space monkeys spazzing out on moon crack?”

“Bring it on.”

We handed our tickets over to the site staff and followed their directions (and the distant throb of bass) toward the ballroom.   At the door, Duo paused, took a deep breath, and pulled it open.

I gaped at the pulsing lights and the twitching, flailing bodies on the dance floor.  Space monkeys on moon crack, indeed.

Keeping to the shadows, we skirted the area.  It wasn’t until Duo crept up behind a young woman with short, black hair who was wearing a frothy, red dress that I realized our objectives had been completely different: while I’d been scanning for threats, Duo had been stalking Hilde at her table.

When he leaped forward and pressed his hands over her eyes, she gasped so loudly I could hear it over the pounding music and endless, monotone rambling of the male vocalist.  I’d heard enough rap music to recognize this as one example.  It being loud enough to make my eardrums ache did not aid it in endearing itself to me, however.

Seated beside Hilde in a black dress that was as tight as Hilde’s was cloud-like, Dorothy smirked and sang out, “Guess who!”

Hilde reached up and grasped Duo’s wrists but didn’t shove him off.  “It’s Duo, isn’t it?  Tell me it’s Duo.  And if it’s not Duo I’ll—I’ll—”

Duo laughed.  “You’ll stutter uselessly at him?”

“You butt!” she screeched, prying his hands away from her face, twirling out of her seat, and just about knocking him over when she launched herself at him.  “I thought you weren’t coming!  And you’re late!  You are _so_ late!”

“We had car trouble,” I explained.

Dorothy gave me a sarcastic grin.  She didn’t believe me.

“I don’t care!” Hilde crowed.  “Oh my _God._   Trowa!  I knew I could count on you!”

Before I could reply, Duo interjected, “Actually, _I_ asked _him_ to come… about five hours ago.  So, I’m lucky he said yes.”

Thankfully, Hilde didn’t ask where we’d gotten our tuxedos.  But, just in case, I added, “Right.  I think Geometry would have given me a smaller headache than this noise.”

“It is a perfectly wretched song,” Dorothy agreed.  “But it’s almost over.  Hopefully, the DJ has something better in the lineup.”

“Hm, you could go check…?” Hilde suggested in a wily tone.

Dorothy grinned.  “I suppose I could do that.”

I did not trust their exchange, but Duo was completely unphased by it.  “So, you ladies are plotting something, are you?” he asked, flopping down in the seat next to Hilde’s and pulling out its neighbor for me.  It was a small table; when Dorothy returned, she’d be sitting directly to my right.

“Of course we are!” Hilde enthused.  “You know us so well.”

I hoped, for Duo’s sake, that the latter was the truth.

“So, how many dances do I get?” she asked suddenly.  To my surprise, she was directing the question at me.

“What?”

“How many dances can I have with your Duo, Trowa?”

I blinked.

Duo stepped in.  “One,” he answered.  “Two if you’re good.  And not the last one.  That one’s Trowa’s… if he wants it.”

In my chest, my heart started pounding.  My palms became slick with sweat.  I wasn’t sure if I was nervous because Duo had conveniently forgotten that I didn’t know how to dance or because I wanted to dance with him a bit too badly.

Dorothy returned to the table before Hilde could finish giving us the details on the Prom King and Queen.  I honestly didn’t give rocks about who had been voted to wear some doff crown and whatnot for the evening.  From Duo’s wry expression, he didn’t much care, either, but Hilde’s animated storytelling technique was amusing him.

As speculated, the next song was moderately tolerable.  It was a love song with abundant piano and a slow tempo.  I sighed with relief, glad for the reprieve.

I was only listening with half my attention as Dorothy began filling us in on some scandal or other that had taken place at the dinner earlier.  Apparently, some extremely popular football player had called his date by his recently-made-ex-girlfriend’s name and earned himself a lapful of gravy as a result.

I continued scanning the tables and dance floor and shadows.  I was tense and I wasn’t sure that it was entirely due to anticipation.  Duo had promised me a dance if I wanted it – and I was mostly sure that I did – but that couldn’t be the only reason for my anxiety.  Perhaps it was the loud music, the fashionable gloom, the swirling lights from the mirror ball, the crush of unfamiliar people…

And then a siren-like wail punctuated the atmosphere.  I stood up suddenly, nearly toppling my chair, and reached for Duo’s shoulder in preparation of hauling him toward the emergency exit.

“Oh, _fuck!_   You didn’t!!” Duo hollered, not looking the least bit alarmed.  He looked… incredulous.  In that moment, the siren faded into the opening strains of a song and a woman’s voice echoed in the room, electronically amplified: _“Don’t live a lie…”_

“Of course I didn’t!” Hilde roared back.  “I’ve been sitting here the whole time!”  And then she nodded in her girlfriend’s direction.  “Dorothy did it, actually.  C’mon, Duo.  I want _this_ song!”

“Dammit, Hils, it’s been like two freakin’ years!  I can’t remember—!”

“Yes, you can and you do!  You wore your dancing shoes.”

Duo looked down at his feet and sighed.

Hilde grinned, triumphantly.  As she stood, Duo looked over at me and mumbled an apology.  “Avert your eyes, babe.  This is gonna be painful to watch.”

I turned in my seat to keep Duo in my sights as Hilde hauled him toward a large, unoccupied space on the dance floor.  “What’s going on?” I asked Dorothy.

“An encore,” she purred, lifting her mobile phone and aiming the camera right at them.  “And this time, I’m recording it for posterity.”

Before I could ask, the song’s introduction reached its crescendo and Duo pulled Hilde close, her back pressed to his front.  Hilde reached up and linked her fingers behind Duo’s neck as his hands gripped her waist.  The lyrics registered belatedly as I watched them move together, stepping with the beat.

_“It’s a liberty walk… liberty, liberty…!”_

They moved toward the edge of the dance floor, one step at a time, pausing to rock their hips into each other in a sensual motion that shocked me breathless.  I wetted my lips, tried to summon the words to ask Dorothy for further clarification, and then the lyrics sped up.  Hilde spun in Duo’s arms and he was leading her across the floor with quick, sure steps, pulling her close, spinning her away, pulling her in as he spun out, grasping her hands, even lifting her up onto his hip as he spun in a tight circle.

“What is this?” I heard myself ask.

“After that huge earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, our school held a charity concert for our sister school in Sendai,” Dorothy explained as Duo twirled Hilde again and then pulled her close with a sweep of his arm that took her so low to the floor I thought she was going to hit her head.  She arched her back, trusting him to bring her out of the dip safely, which he did.

My mouth went dry at the show of strength.  Ja, Duo was strong.  I knew this.  But _seeing_ it so easily demonstrated…!

“Hilde convinced Duo to do a dance with her.”

“And this is it?” I managed, afraid to blink.  My God, he was lithe.  Every motion of his hips was smooth and tempting.  Watching them, I couldn’t believe they hadn’t rehearsed this ahead of time, but Duo’s shock had been genuine.  He was perfection.  He rocked his spine in a supple motion that reminded me of that night in Vientiane, of having him beneath me, arching into my touch.  My pulse skyrocketed in response.  Dear God, he was luscious.

Despite that observation, when the song changed again, I did not expect Duo to shrug his shoulders and perform a strange, fluid, sliding-step maneuver as he retreated backwards from Hilde.

“And that is—?” I gasped out.

Dorothy laughed.  “That is called the ‘Moonwalk’ and it’s the number one reason why I put on nylons tonight.”

Duo finished the move with a twirl, tucked his chin, pressed a hand to his pelvis and, holding out his other hand for Hilde to take, he jerked his hips forward in a move I’d only ever seen while we’d been naked together.

Bugger.  And.  Fuck.

I was peripherally aware of a crowd forming around them as Duo lifted Hilde again, dipped her low, danced with quick, neat steps as their joined hands pushed each other away and then drew each other back.  They shared a look, a playful grin, and then a series of slides that had them crisscrossing each other’s path in one near-collision after another.

_“It’s a liberty walk.  Saying goodbye to the people who tied you up.”_

A flurry of twirls spun out Hilde’s skirts and showed off her red heels and slender legs.  This was met with wolf whistles from the okes.  When she finally came to a stop, flushed and panting, she grinned knowingly at Duo, cuing him with a curtsey.  A smirk twitched on his lips as yet another bridge in the music approached and then—

_“Just walk this way!”_

_Fuck… all._

He lunged onto his knees on the floor, leaned back on his hands, spun on his back before performing a brief handstand and leaping to his feet in time to wrap an arm around Hilde’s waist as he swung her about.  More twirls, quick steps, jerking hips, and shifting shoulders.  The beat wasn’t just flowing through Duo.  He _was_ the beat.

_“Run for yourself – slam the door – not a prisoner anymore!”_

And then it was back to the moves they’d opened the dance with: Hilde was in front of him, her arms lifted back and linked behind his neck and his hands on her hips as they rocked with each step back toward our table.

In the next instant, the song was over and a new beat – hard, heavy, fast – was pounding through the room, swallowing up the applause and cheers that I could see being given from the other dancers and the people at the tables near ours.  Duo didn’t acknowledge them.  He was looking at me.  Blushing.

He had no reason to blush.  None at all.  Dear God but that had been _amazing._   My kerel could dance.  Far beyond my meager imaginings or pathetic expectations.  I was irrationally proud that he was with me.  And I was doubly reassured that he was going home with me.

The moment was broken when Hilde tugged on Duo’s arm, grinned evilly, and said something I couldn’t hear.  Duo hesitated.  She gave him a persuasive look and he relented.  But no, he more than relented.  He nodded, smiling an evil grin of his own.

“You wanna bet?” I thought I read in the movements of his lips.

Hilde laughed, lifted her arms to his shoulders and, straddling his leg, rocked her hips suggestively.  To my surprise, Duo merely placed a hand on the small of her back and urged her closer, thrusting back.

Oh, no.  No, he was not dancing like _that_ with Hilde.  Or anyone else.  But if I went out there and pulled him away...  Actually I wasn’t sure what he would do.  Would he be angry?

“Those little devils,” Dorothy purred appreciatively.

“What?” I growled.

She gave me a knowing look.  “Don’t you see what they’re doing?”

I could see plenty.

“They’re baiting us,” she supplied.

Just then, the lyrics filtered through the thick, red haze of lust and possession in my mind and Duo looked up, meeting my gaze over Hilde’s shoulder, and mouthed in perfect synchronization with the song’s vocalist, _“I feel you…”_

“Fuck,” I muttered.  Dorothy was right.  Duo was trying to draw me out onto the dance floor and Hilde was his accomplice.  “I can’t dance.”

Dorothy shrugged.  “It’s basically the same as having sex standing up.  You can handle that, can’t you?”

I didn’t answer.  Duo was lip-syncing again and, masochistically, I needed to know every word.

_“The room is full but all I see is the way your eyes just blaze through me like fire in the dark…”_

I gritted my teeth to hold back the shiver of arousal.  Fuck it.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I stood and held out my hand to Dorothy.  “Collect Hilde or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Smiling, she placed her hand in mine and we stepped out onto the dance floor.  Dorothy had been right: it was more or less like having a press while standing.  Duo’s eyes widened and flashed with heat when I pulled Dorothy’s hips snuggly against mine and began moving with the beat.  He warned me with a look and I felt a wave of satisfaction: he was jealous and aroused.  Good.  That made us even.

I grinned as the lyrics pulsed between us like warning shots, like a red cape to a charging bull: _“So come on, baby, keep provoking me, keep on roping me…”_

And suddenly, Dorothy and Hilde were in each other’s arms, leaving Duo and I an arm’s length away from each other.  I didn’t stop to think about it; I pulled him close, hissing as his body heat slammed into me—

_“—like a tidal wave…”_

Duo’s palm slid over my hip to the small of my back beneath my jacket and then I was moving with him, rolling and thrusting with the beat of the song.  He smoothed a hand up to the back of my neck and I copied him, only noticing that, with one hand on his hip and another curled around his neck, neither one of us was the dominant partner.  Well, actually, Duo was because he knew what he was doing, but he made it look like I was his equal out here, on the dance floor, in front of his classmates.

Oh God.  This was as good as a declaration.  I studied Duo’s expression, noting the light in his eyes and feeling the press of his body against mine.  He didn’t care if everyone knew he was with me.  He wanted me and he wasn’t ashamed of it.  And, as I had never been ashamed of wanting him, I leaned into him, rubbing the nape of his neck with my fingers until he shuddered.

And suddenly the song was echoing away.  _No._   No, I wasn’t ready to let go yet.

“Last dance,” the DJ purred over the microphone as musical notes began to fall delicately – like snowflakes – in the background.  “So grab your special someone.”

I already had mine.  Duo made no move to leave the dance floor.  He collected my hand from behind his neck and, entwining our fingers, pressed the back of my hand to his chest, over his heart.  The song wasn’t exactly slow, but it was slow enough for Duo to sway with me, left to right, back and forth, just as he had at the kitchen sink the day before.

Our eyes met just as the lyrics overlaid the harmony: _“If today’s the day I die…”_

My breath hitched.  Duo inhaled sharply.  I held on, wondering if I ought to be moving us both toward the exit.

_“Let me fall in love, let me save a life…”_

Too late.  He was remembering.  I could see it in his eyes.  There was joy and pain, wonder and rage.  I saw Laos in his expression.  I saw us: text messages in the dark; an embrace at a mall food court; a scream of denial atop a crumbling ruin.

_“My only regret is having regrets…”_

He closed his eyes, reaffirmed his grip on my hand, and took a deep breath… but he didn’t let me go.

_“No one lives forever, but we will be remembered for what we do right now…”_

I leaned in and pressed my cheek to his, reminding him that I was here and he was not alone.  I shared his memories and, to a certain extent, I shared his pain.  I had failed both him and his father that day in Laos.  I had failed and I was never going to be able to make that right.

_“We’re all just kids who grew up way too fast…”_

He took a deep breath, struggling for control.

_“The good die young but the great will always last…”_

I didn’t care if the maxim was true; I was not going to lose Duo.  He was good.  He was great.  But, more than that, he was mine… and I look after what’s mine.

_“We’re all soldiers tonight…”_

Duo was a soldier.  He fought as hard as I once had and his battles were no less difficult.  I’d risked death.  He risked losing his soul, his dreams, himself.

But as the song tore through our defenses and ripped out our hearts, it also offered solace.

_“I’m living louder and dreaming longer tonight…”_

And I was.  I was living louder with Duo.  And I was dreaming.  I was making music in the afternoons.  I was making love to him with every touch.  My dreams had never been so real.

_“Baby, I’m fighting harder and loving stronger tonight…”_

And he was.  His determination awed me and the strength of his love left me breathless.  I inhaled deeply, needing his scent to calm the aching in my chest, to orient me to the here and now.

_Flash!_

I tensed, looking up and in the direction of the light that had just exploded at the edge of my vision.

“It’s for the yearbook,” Duo told me, following my gaze.

I blinked, realizing that what I’d seen had not been the muzzle flare of a gun, merely a camera.  Someone was taking photos of the dancers… and he was moving in our direction.

“Duo?” I checked.

He gave me an ironic grin.  “You don’t feel like being immortalized in print?”

I shook my head.

He nodded and led me off the dance floor and out of the ballroom by our joined hands.  Before the door shut behind me, I looked back and glimpsed Hilde and Dorothy posing for the camera.  I instantly felt ashamed of myself.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked him, catching the door before it could close completely.

“I want you,” he replied on a shaky whisper, in a tone that had nothing to do with sex.  He was telling me his point of non-negotiation.  He’d give up all else… but not me.

I pulled him into a shadowy side hall.  We could still hear the melody of the song faintly through the wall.  “Dance with me?” I asked.

He did more than that.  As we swaai-ed - both of his arms looped around my shoulders and my hands found their way to the small of his back - he kissed me in murky hall without breaking our rhythm.  He played with my hair, which still needed cutting.

“I love you, too,” he whispered.

Ah, he was answering my declarations from earlier when he’d been falling apart in my arms.  I smiled.  “Ja.  I know.”  A moment passed and then I sighed and confessed, “I don’t want to work in security forever.”

His hands stirred against the nape of my neck.  “Yeah.  I know.”

I pressed my forehead to his.

“Let’s check out music schools,” he proposed.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that, either, but I wouldn’t know unless I tried.  And I knew I couldn’t try quite yet.  Duo needed me at his back for a bit longer, but some day, when all the threats were dissolved, maybe I could do something else.  Maybe I could be someone else.  Maybe I could be… me.

The song faded and we leaned against each other in the hall, watching for Hilde and Dorothy.  “We should say goodbye,” Duo told me even though I’d made no move to leave ahead of the crowd.

“Are you going to be dealing with a lot of kak because of this?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Dancing at prom… with me.”

Duo shrugged a shoulder.  “Bring it on.”

I loved him for not downplaying it, and I loved him for having weighed the risks and decided I was worth it.  Suddenly, I remembered Sally telling me I was worth knowing.  Some part of me had always known that Duo thought so, but here and now it settled deep inside me, threading and lacing itself through my heart.  A permanent fixture.

“Hey, guys!” Hilde called, answering Duo’s wave.  She and Dorothy wove through the tide of people heading for the car park and made it over to our little corridor.  “What happened?  Carl came over with the camera and you were both gone!”

Duo shrugged, grinning unrepentantly.  “Can’t blame a guy for wanting a minute alone with his date, can you?”

I snorted.

Hilde started heckling him and Dorothy’s attention was snagged by someone on their way out.  I kept my hand on Duo’s waist and waited for the chaos to subside into something manageable.  When the hallway was mostly clear, we headed out, collecting Dorothy along the way.

“If you guys promise to behave yourselves, you can share our limo back to the city,” Hilde roundabout-ly invited.

Duo laughed.  “What have you been smoking, Hils?  You know I’m not gonna behave myself.”

He demonstrated this by sneaking a grope.  I jerked with surprise.  Grabbing his hand from where it was cupping my arse, I growled playfully, “Don’t start something you’re not going to want to finish in view of witnesses.”

He cackled gleefully.  “Point.  I’m not much of an exhibitionist.” 

“All evidence to the contrary,” Dorothy retorted, waggling her mobile phone at him.

Holding the door open for us, Duo replied, “And I’ll expect copies of those with your blackmail demands.”

“We can discuss terms in the car,” Hilde replied smugly.

“Dream on, woman,” Duo told her with a roll of his eyes.  “Who’d drive my car back?”

The cool night air hit my overheated skin, clearing my head of the lingering echo of bass-beat and dance music.  I scanned the car park, noting the line of limos waiting for their passengers.  Kids were dashing here and there, calling to each other, screeching with laughter, hollering taunts.  Dorothy waved to her driver and their limo pulled up to the pavement.

“Are you sure you won’t ride with us?” Dorothy checked.

Duo shook his head.  “But I will help madam into her seat,” he teased, opening the back door for her.

Dorothy kissed Duo on the cheek.  “You’re such a darling… when you try.”

Duo smirked.

“Is he now?”

Duo froze.  Dorothy whipped around toward the interior of the car.  Hilde tilted her head to the side in confusion.  I tensed.

As the man inside the limo stepped out, I moved to place myself between him and Duo.

Dorothy squealed with delight, “Uncle Treize!”

Ja, we were looking at Treize Khushrenada, Dorothy Catalonia’s uncle, and the man who was determined to make Duo’s life absolute hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve never played the Tomb Raider game so I have no idea what it’s like. At all.
> 
> The movie Duo and Trowa watch is based on historical events. Look up “47 Ronin” or “Chushingura” if you’re interested in the details. It’s a very famous and popular chapter in Japanese history. Apparently, there’s a 2013 adaptation of this starring Keanu Reeves… but, as a side note, the story looks completely different. I saw the movie trailer for it and was all, “Whut…?”
> 
> Trowa’s thought about putting the French fry out of its misery is inspired by Trixie’s Trowa from her fic, “Rattlesnakes.” Mind the rating and warnings on this baby because she does ANGST in all capital letters.
> 
> Dorothy Catalonia really is Treize’s niece in the series. I’d forgotten that and rediscovered it while I was double checking the official spelling of “Khushrenada” and saw a list of known relatives, which included our favorite psychotic blonde battle girl.


	14. The Quest, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now approaching more action-y goodness. Chapters will be shorter, but there'll be 13 of 'em. Enjoy.
> 
> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Duo POV
> 
> Theme music: "Seven Devils" by Florence + the Machine

Why was it that the best and worst moments of life always came in pairs?  A question for the ages.

I stared dumbly at Treize Khushrenada, shocked completely and utterly stupid, as he set Dorothy back down on her feet and, with a charming smile, confided, “I was just making sure your wet bar was fully stocked.”

“You didn’t!” Dorothy nearly squealed before ducking into the limo.  “You did!  Champagne!”

He chuckled and, turning to Hilde, said, “Ms. Schbeiker.  It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. Khushrenada.”

“Please, call me Treize.”

Dorothy clamored back out of the car and threw her arms around him for a second time.  _“Pink_ champagne!  I knew there was a reason why you’re my favorite uncle.”

“Yes, of course,” he replied good-naturedly.

I thought about tearing his face off, stomping in his sinuses, and feeding what was left to the local wildlife – all two million squirrels, five hundred thousand chipmunks, and three woodchucks.  Footage of the feeding frenzy would be a bit hit on YouTube.

Trowa bumped my shoulder and I realized I was strangling the edge of the car door in my white-knuckled grasp.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friends?” Treize prompted his niece.  His _niece._   Holy fuck.  Dorothy was his Goddamn _niece._  How had I not known this?  And… hold up.  Why did Trowa not look surprised?

“As if you couldn’t guess,” Dorothy replied with an indulgent eye roll.  “I’ve told you about them often enough.  This is Dominic Maxwell and Trowa Barton.”

“A pleasure to meet you face to face at long last,” Treize said, holding out his hand.  I couldn’t bring myself to take it.

Thankfully, I had a socially acceptable excuse.  I released the car door and held up both hands which were smeared with that exhaust stuff and oxidized rubber junk that inevitably collects around the edges of vehicle doors.  “Sorry, man.  I’m all covered in car grime.”

“Ah.  Thoughtful of you to mention it.”  Treize didn’t try to shake Trowa’s hand, which was kind of too bad as I sorta wondered what he’d do about it.  Watching Khushrenada’s arm being yanked out of its socket was guaranteed to brighten up my day.  What was left of it, anyway.

“Duo?  Trowa?  Are you _sure_ you guys aren’t coming?” Hilde asked, leaning into the still-open doorway.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I don’t feel like bailing my car out of impound tomorrow morning.”

“I could have my driver return it to your home for you,” Treize offered and I was this fucking close to seeing how many of his teeth I could knock out with one punch.  I didn’t _care_ that he’d just nodded toward the two security goons who were lurking next to his sleek, black sedan.  I’d take them down, too.  Bring.  It.  On.

But was I seriously going to commit Trowa to this kind of altercation?  I wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d let me charge in with fists swinging while he waved pompoms from the sidelines and cheered for me.

“No thanks!” I replied through a smile so fake I figured it had to have a “Made in China” sticker on it somewhere.  “It has a delicate transmission.”

He didn’t press, and I was somewhat disappointed.  Part of me wanted to just come right out and accuse the bastard of conspiring to plant a bomb under the hood, but then I’d have to explain that little comment to Dorothy.  Hilde might believe it was just another random instance of off-key Duo Maxwell humor, but Dorothy wouldn’t be fooled.

Damn it.

“Well,” Treize said briskly, “that is a pity.”  Turning to Dorothy, he continued suavely, “Darling, I suppose you and Hilde will have to finish off that champagne by yourselves.”

“Mission accepted,” Dorothy replied with a smirk.  Turning back to the limo, she paused to ask, “Will I see you at brunch tomorrow, Uncle Treize?”

Not if I run him over with my car and throw his body in the Hudson for the fishies to nibble on.

“Of course.”

“Bye, Duo!  Bye, Trowa!” Hilde called, waving.  “Thanks for coming tonight!  We’ll email you copies of the video!”

As if I cared about any of that now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trowa nod once in acknowledgement.  I managed to do the same.  Thank God both she and Dorothy were too distracted by their sparkly, pink drink to notice.

Treize shut the door and the limo pulled away.  Despite the lingering presence of my classmates as they whooped and yelled and chased each other around the parking lot, I suddenly felt totally alone.  Like it was high noon and I was facing down Treize Khushrenada on the dusty main street of Tombstone.

“Lord Maxwell,” Treize began and I suddenly knew that we were moving this game to the next level.  Oh, yeah.  He knew exactly who I was.  That little introduction thing had all been for show, for his _niece’s_ benefit.  The fucker.  He’d been using Dorothy to keep tabs on me and she didn’t even know she’d been played.  He said with sincerity, “I was saddened to hear about your father’s death.  Tragic.”

Oh my God.  I was going to kill him.  Witnesses and goons be damned.  I gritted my teeth.  I felt my hands curl into fists.  I didn’t realize I was shaking until Trowa grabbed my arm to keep me from moving into a crouch that was gonna result in me springing at the bastard’s neck and tearing out his throat with my teeth.

“Yah,” Trowa answered in a diamond-hard tone.  “It was.  If you’ve come to pay your respects, they’re not welcome.”

I would tell him how much I loved him later.  After I killed Treize and he helped me get rid of the body.  Oh, and after I asked how and when he’d found out about Dorothy being related to the sonuvabitch.

“They say actions speak louder than words,” Treize remarked.  “So I’ll just get on with the gesture of friendship I came here to make.”

“Right.  Because supplying teenagers with pink champagne would ruin your street cred if word got around,” I snarled.

He had the gall to laugh.  And then he said, “My company has been working closely with the Laotian government to clear the site of the collapsed temple, donating equipment and manpower to the effort.”

“Uh huh.”  He could pretend to be a fucking philanthropist all he wanted but we all knew he was a self-serving, money-grubbing slug playing at war games.  _Find what you were looking for?_ I didn’t say.  I knew he hadn’t found it.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here now.

Treize gestured toward his own jacket pocket and, with a knowing grin at Trowa, inquired, “May I?”

Trowa narrowed his eyes and nodded once.  Still, he braced himself beside me as if Treize really was gonna pull a gun on us right here, surrounded by high school seniors.  But what he actually removed from his pocket was—

“A photo?” I spat.  “Is this supposed to be some kind of sick memento?”  _Here, Duo, this is where we found your father’s body.  Right here.  In fact, if you look closely, you can still see the smudge where he—_

Treize affected a wounded expression.  “I’m hurt that you think so little of me, Lord Maxwell.  No, it is not a memento.  It’s the image of an artifact the crew recovered.”

At the mention of the word “artifact,” I snatched the photo from his manicured and moisturized fingers, heart pounding in my throat.  I glared at the image, and then I felt the blood drain from my face.  I wasn’t looking at a photo of that damned half of a key thing that he was after.  I was looking at an image of a hunting knife – _my_ hunting knife – the hunting knife I’d dropped somewhere inside the temple, sometime between leaving my dad by the stairs in sight of daylight and going back for Trowa.

“Strange that such a recent item was found at a site which has been abandoned for decades,” Treize remarked.  “I don’t suppose you know how it ended up there?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because your fingerprints are on it.”

Fuck.  I thought fast.  “Gee, what are the odds that the knife I lost in Vientiane would’ve ended up a couple hundred miles away at that old place?”

Treize smiled widely.  “Precisely my thinking.”

I wasn’t fooled.  “So that’s your game, is it?  You’re gonna spin this so it looks like I was there?  Are you actually suggesting that I was somehow involved in my own dad’s death?”  Which was pretty close to the truth.  Fuck.  “Even if you could get people to believe that, what good would I be to you in prison?”

“Absolutely none,” he agreed cheerfully.  “But you’re assuming that yours are the _only_ fingerprints on this knife and, as you said, you lost it in Vientiane…”  He looked expectantly at Trowa.

Oh _fuck NO._   “Don’t you dare,” I growled.  “You leave Trowa out of this.”

“Oh, I am.  For now.  At the moment, this particular knife has been conveniently misplaced in the Laotian forensics lab archives.  But it might, one day in the not too distant future, find its way to an Interpol office.”  He frowned in a mockery of thought.  “Tell me, do they require fingerprint scans when entering England as well as the U.S.?  Or is that done during the visa application process now?”

“You—!”

Treize smiled warmly and, with a flick of his fingers, removed a business card from his lapel pocket.  He offered it to me with perfect etiquette.  “I’ll be waiting for your call, Lord Maxwell.  I believe you’re already familiar with the business venture I’d like to discuss.”

I took the card because I couldn’t kill him.  And if I knew anything about business it was this:

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” I murmured on a hateful breath as Treize joined the goons by his car and slid into the backseat.

“What?” Trowa asked, probably thinking I’d lost my mind.

Watching the sedan pull out onto the road, I tucked the business card in my pants pocket.  The lapel pocket was too good for that piece of trash.

“First rule of living in the jungle,” I told Trowa, oddly impressed that I could speak at all.  My voice sounded so mellow compared to the seething fury roaring and tearing through my guts.  God how I wanted Khushrenada broken and bleeding at my feet, free of charge, with zero repercussions and no refunds or exchanges.

Trowa contemplated my brief explanation for a moment before saying, “That’s not a rule where I come from.”

“Yeah, well.”  I shrugged.  “Here, the people closest to you are the ones most likely to stab you in the fucking back.”  Which put me in mind of Dorothy.  I contemplated just how close Khushrenada had gotten to me, how close he’d been all this time.  Jesus.  All he’d had to do was call up his _darling_ niece and ask her about her day and listen to her ramble about her friends from school.  Instant Maxwell update.

That slimy, scheming, scum-sucking bastard.  He’d drawn first blood.

I insisted on checking the car over before I drove us home.  I also took special care to abide by each and every traffic law, to the letter.  I probably drove Trowa insane with how careful I was being, but he didn’t say a thing.  Whenever I glanced in his direction to check the passenger side mirror, his expression was frozen.  He looked just like that statue I’d taken him for back in Egypt when I’d climbed out of the Jeep, almost fallen on my ass in the sand, and then nearly had the shit scared outta me by a silent watcher.

I could only guess what he was thinking about and this was not the place to discuss it.  I felt like we were being watched, like police officers on patrol were following us, just looking for an excuse to pull us over, haul us in, take fingerprints and start asking questions.

Oh God this looked bad.  This looked so epically bad.

“Duo,” Trowa said when I just unlocked the front door and marched over to the sofa.

“We’re fucked,” I replied.

He shut the door, threw the deadbolt, and approached me with caution.  “No, we aren’t.  It’ll be fine.”

I rolled my head back and glared at him.  “No, it won’t.  He’s threatening you!  It is not – and it will not be – _fine!”_

He shrugged as if there was nothing whatsoever to worry about, as if I’d just announced that it was Halloween and I’d eaten all the candy meant for the trick-or-treaters, as if we could just hand out condoms to the kiddies.  Problem solved and STDs prevented in the next generation.  Two birds with one stone.

Trowa said, “Let him make his accusations.”

“Oh, no.  No.  You did _not_ just say that.”  Was he insane?  Had he developed a dementia-inducing brain tumor in the last hour?  Had he gone out frolicking in the forest and been licking frogs while my back was turned?

“What’s the problem?  It’s just a knife.  Your father’s blood isn’t on it.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”  I pushed my bangs back from my face.  “Goddamnit, Trowa, either you or I or both of us were in the temple where the knife was found.  That’s what the prosecution is going to argue.  Now, if I pay for your legal fees, it’s going to look like I conspired with my boyfriend to take my dad out of the picture so I could inherit everything.”

“So don’t pay my legal fees.”

Now he was just being ridiculous.  “Sure.  OK.  Your public defender will have you locked up for the rest of your life by lunch.”  And just so we were on the same page here, I emphasized, “In prison, Trowa.”

“No,” he refuted, shaking his head.  “The burden of proof is on them.  There’s reasonable doubt.”

I wanted to smack him.  As if the written law ever worked out like it was supposed to.  As if the justice system was _fair._   “Prove that you weren’t there,” I dared him and I was gratified when he looked a little worried.  “Prove that you didn’t intend to kill him.”  It was easier for him to shrug that one off, but then I twisted the metaphorical knife for both of us: “Prove that you weren’t involved in his death.”

His breath caught.

I gave him a grim smile.  “Yeah.”

He slid down into one of the armchairs that we hardly ever used, bracing his elbows on his knees and staring down at his feet.  “What do we do?”

I blinked with surprise and heard myself ask far too sweetly, “Oh, you mean, you _knew_ that Dorothy was Treize’s niece but you didn’t come up with any contingency plans?”

Trowa looked up at me… and he kept on looking for a long moment.  “How could _you_ not know about that?  She’s your friend.”

I stiffened.  “She’s Hilde’s creepy, mansuit-coveting girlfriend!  Why would I ask?  And how the hell did you find out?”

“I Googled her.”

“What?”

He repeated, “I Googled her, Duo.  Like I Googled Hilde and Sally and Miles and Rod and your fokken lawyers and anyone that I’ve met through you, anyone that I’ve met at my school, anyone—”

_“Why?”_

He gave me a look of such incredulity that he probably thought I was the one who’d been licking toads and smoking mushrooms.  “I’m a merc, Duo!  As you like to conveniently forget!”

“I didn’t forget!  I just don’t understand why you’d find out something like this and then not mention it!  Not once!  Goddamnit, Trowa, this is huge!  Do you get that?  How could you keep this from me?”

“I wasn’t keeping it from you!  You had your plate full with the company.  I was just doing my job.”

His job.  Really?  “Maybe I was unclear before, but when I said, ‘You’re not a merc to me,’ I meant, ‘You shouldn’t be a merc _for_ me.’”

“Well, I am one.  And while I can’t help you deal with stockholders and market research, I _can_ keep an eye on Khushrenada and the people he has watching your every move!”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?”

“Of course!  Why do you think I’m always sending photos in my emails to the captain?”

“What has that to do with anything?”

He huffed out an exasperated breath.  “Every time we’ve gone out, someone has been following us!”

“And you didn’t think I needed to know this before now?”

“It’s not your job!”

“Damn it, it’s my fucking business!”

“And the company isn’t enough for you?  What were you going to do if I’d told you about Khushrenada hiring okes to shadow us?  Plan a fokken counterattack?”

“We’ll never know, will we?  I wasn’t allowed to make that decision!”

He shrank back as if I’d just planted my fist in his gut.  Yeah, well, now he knew what it felt like.  His betrayal left a hole in my middle.  I half expected my guts to spill out if I so much as breathed. 

And yet, I couldn’t just sit here anymore, either.  I couldn’t sit here and look at him.  It fucking hurt to watch him bury his face in his hands, to watch him stop resisting and just give in to the fact that he’d fucked up.  Yeah, I was angry with him, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt him.  Not like this.

I got up and lurched in the direction of the bathroom.  I couldn’t deal with this now, not the mess Khushrenada had dumped in our laps or the mess I’d just made of Trowa, or he of me.  I’d had enough.

Bracing myself on my arms over the bathroom sink, I thought about puking.  I thought about smashing my fist into the mirror.  I thought about throwing our still-damp towels on the floor and stomping on them.  I thought about going back out into the living room and wrapping Trowa up in my arms and never letting him go.

In the end, I just sighed and shrugged out of my jacket.  I couldn’t bring myself to let it fall on the floor.  This was the jacket my dad had married my mom in and I was the only biological evidence that they’d lived at all.  Solo was dead.  My mom and dad were dead.  I shouldn’t care about a fucking tuxedo jacket.  This didn’t make any sense.

I balled it up gently and tucked it under one arm before I sat down on the commode so I could reach down and untie my shoes.  I hated these shoes.  I’d worn them in Vientiane.  When I kicked them off, the fabric of my trousers rubbed over my knees, creating little vibrations in the bandages Trowa had put on my rug-burned patches of skin earlier.  Jesus, had that only been this afternoon?  What the fuck had happened to the universe in the meantime?  When had it all gone to hell and why hadn’t I gotten the fucking Tweet about it?

Standing up again, I dropped my pants on the floor, glanced down, and hissed.  Goddamn it, this was just what I needed; there was blood soaking through the bandages on my knees.  That’ll teach me to breakdance hours after riding Trowa like some kind of rodeo star.   “Fuck,” I hissed, and then I snorted wryly.  Yeah, I guess I could say that again.

Before I decided whether or not it was worth repeating, the bathroom door swung open silently.  Huh.  I must’ve forgotten to shut it all the way.  Trowa stood on the threshold, his one visible green eye moving up and down, scanning me.  His jaw clenched when he saw my knees.

“Bugger all, Duo,” he muttered.

I guess this meant I had a reserved seat on the counter again.  “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t even notice until now?”

He snorted softly and began going through the drawers and cabinets, reassembling his impromptu med kit.  I jumped up on the counter, still holding onto that fucking tux jacket like it was a security blanket.

To my surprise, he didn’t just rip the tape and gauze off.  No, he soaked a washcloth in warm water, wrung it out, and applied it to each of my knees until the bandages just about slid off on their own.

“How can you be so good at the little things,” I asked, my mouth on autopilot, “and then totally miss the obvious?”

He paused, breath held for a long moment, and then he sighed.  He was scowling as he tossed the used gauze into the little, plastic trash can.  “Because that’s what I have the most experience at,” he shocked me by replying.  I’d thought I’d just asked a rhetorical question.  “I was never in charge of the big picture until you needed me in Laos.”

He was right.  I’d put him in charge when he’d arrived in Vientiane: I had needed him to be my captain, to tell me what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.

He still wasn’t looking at me when he said, “I shouldn’t have assumed that I’d earned a second chance at it.  You’re right.  I should have mentioned it.”

I opened my mouth.  Nothing came out.

Nodding in the direction of the shower, he said, “Go on.  I’ll re-bandage your knees when you’re done.”

Because I had no idea what to say to that, I did as he suggested.  He sat on the commode the entire time; I could see him through the pebbled glass of the shower door.  I’d just finished washing my hair when he finally spoke.

“The knife… I gave it to you.”

For a second, I had no idea where that had come from, but then I realized he was offering yet another alternate explanation to counter Treize’s story.  I closed my eyes and sighed.  “Yeah, so I could help you finish the job of taking my dad out of the picture.”

“I wasn’t even in the country when he was taken.”

“Doesn’t mean either of us weren’t involved.”

“There are dozens of other fingerprints on that knife.”

“But ours come with a big, juicy motive attached.”

“Just whose side are you on?”

“Yours.  You need to understand, baby: it’s not the evidence or the justice system that wins out in court; it’s the guy who tells the best story.”

“No one in their right mind would believe that you wanted your father dead.”

“Yeah.  Unfortunately, most people are right-handed, which means they’re in their _left_ minds.”

He sighed.  “What are we going to do?” he repeated.

“I’m working on it.”

He shook his head.

“You are not allowed to just give up, you got that?”

“…yah.”

His defeated whimper didn’t engender much confidence.  I ordered, “Repeat the hell after me: I, Trowa Barton, sexy South African badass—”  He choked out a laugh. “—do hereby promise not to let myself get screwed over by Treize Khushrenada.”

“I promise, Duo.”

He hadn’t repeated it word-for-word, but his tone was strong enough to carry a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, so I figured that was probably the best I was gonna get.

Silence stretched out between us again, lounging in the steam-filled air and smirking his ass off.  I slammed the tap shut and felt compelled to ask, “What kind of counter-attack do you think I would’ve come up with?  If you’d told me about Dorothy and the rest of ‘em?”

“You would have shut Dorothy out and then Khushrenada would’ve known that we’d found his informant.  The okes following us would’ve taken more precautions to prevent me from keeping an eye on them.”

I thought about that as I dripped in the shower stall.  “Yeah.  You’re probably right about that.”

He handed me a fresh towel when I slid the door open and he waited for me to wring the water out of my hair before draping yet another fluffy, warm towel over my shoulders.  I sat up on the counter without prompting.  I knew better than to wait until I’d finished drying my hair to deal with the strawberries on my knees.  By then they’d be scabbed over, dried out, cracked to hell, and bleeding.

It was a total déjà vu moment to be sitting here as Trowa patched me up for a second time today.  It was too bad he wasn’t naked this time.  I wracked my brain for something to say.  Trowa was too quiet and it scared me when I tried to imagine what kind of thinking he was doing on the other side of that too-fucking-noble expression of his.  For once, my gift of gab epically failed.

I sighed, slumping back against the mirror when the bathroom door shut quietly behind him.

Fuck.

This time, when I thought the word, it didn’t seem nearly as funny.

Drying my hair took normally took an eternity and a half.  Tonight was no exception.  As I worked through it, my mind started nudging me toward bigger and better oh-fuck-I-just-shit-myself fears.  I pictured Trowa packing his backpack and walking out the door.  Or just walking out the door – sans backpack – and heading over to Khushrenada’s posh office and slicing the man’s throat open… before turning himself in to the police.  That visual was so strong that my hair was just shy of dripping when I could no longer take not knowing where he was or what he was doing.  I dumped the blow dryer on the counter and fumbled for the bathroom door.  My hands slipped on the condensation-coated knob and I had to bite my lip and force myself to _focus._

When I got the freakin’ contraption to work, I just about fell into the hallway and, still wrapped in a towel, I barged my way into the living room.  It was empty.  I headed for my bedroom.  No one was there.  I tried the music room and I was well and truly scared now because he wasn’t sitting at the piano.  Goddamn it!  Why hadn’t I said something?  Stopped him?  But no, wait.  His backpack.  If that was still here, then maybe—no, wait!  He was probably still packing or digging out his knives.  I could stop him!  I could tell him I—

I slammed into Solo’s old room so hard the door almost bounced back and bashed me in the face.  I wouldn’t have cared if it had.  Trowa was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in his normal PJs: khaki sleep pants and a grey long-sleeved T-shirt.  He was ready for bed, but he was just sitting there.  The covers were still done up and tucked around the edges of the mattress with military precision.  It made no sense for him to be ready for bed, sitting in here on a bed he’d never used with the covers still undisturbed.  Fuck it; I’d figure it out later.  What was more important was—

_You’re still here.  Oh, Jesus.  Thank you._

I would have said the words if I’d had the breath and spit to form them.

It was only when relief released me from my quiet panic that I remembered the fact that I’d put Treize’s business card in the pocket of the tuxedo trousers, which were piled up on the bathroom counter.  So Trowa wouldn’t have known where to find the guy in the first place.  But, then again, he was well-versed in the art of Googling by now, wasn’t he?

When I continued not speaking, he asked, “All right?”

“Uh…”  I honestly didn’t know.

“Your hair’s still wet,” he observed just as I asked, “What’re you doing in here?”

“What’s it look like?” he asked with a self-directed sarcastic grin.  Christ but it was like looking in a mirror.  He had my smirk, my sarcasm… the whole shebang.

I squinted at him.  “Like you’re plotting to kill Khushrenada in a way that leaves me off the hook.”

His chuckle was dark.  “Good guess.”

“But seriously,” I continued with sudden desperation, not willing to focus any of my attention on imagining a knife, a wire, or a wooden stake in his hands, hands that had touched me and molded me into someone who needed him, someone who would go insane without him, “if you’re tired, just come to bed.”

He jerked and looked up at me for the first time since I’d accused him of mercing behind my back.  Incredulous, he rasped, “Would I be welcome?”

What the hell kind of question was that?  “Shall I go write you an invitation?”  He’d never needed one before.  In fact, if I remembered correctly, he’d hauled _my ass_ into my own bed our first night here together.  Talk about taking the initiative.

He didn’t answer.  He just, y’know, watched me.

Belatedly, it occurred to me that he’d come in here for a reason.  “Oh.  OK.  Uh, if you wanna be alone, I can understand that.”  Not really, but it seemed like the right thing to say.  I had to give him a choice, after all.

“You don’t?”

I honestly had no idea what was going on with him.  I’d never seen him like this before.  “Why would I?”

Trowa blinked and, in the next heartbeat, gestured in the direction of the living room.  “Perhaps because of what was said out there?”

Hold up.  “What did I say?”  Were we arguing some more?  Because, if we were, it’d be nice to know what we were arguing about.

“You don’t trust me.”

“Dude!  I just took a shower with you sitting on the Goddamn toilet.  What the fuck?  When did I say I didn’t trust you?”

“When you told me I took your choice away.”

“Well, you did.  That doesn’t mean I don’t trust you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

Oh, God.  What a fucking mess.  And it was starting to give me a headache.

I marched into his room and sat myself down on his lap, deliberately choosing the most precarious and vulnerable position I could: I straddled his thighs.  My towel gaped open.  My toes just barely brushed the floor.  The edge of the mattress was pressing into my shins.  I had zero traction.  I placed my hands on his shoulders and urged, “Trowa, look at me.”  I watched as he did, his gaze moving from my thighs, skipping over the peepshow I was giving him courtesy of the slightly-too-small towel, roving up my chest, and then meeting my gaze.  “Look at me.”  I gripped his shoulders harder.  “Do you really think I don’t trust you?”

I held my breath.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

I waited.

And then, with a sobbing sigh, he wrapped his arms around my waist, pulled me close, and pressed his face to my bare shoulder.  Oh, thank God.  Thank you Jesus and Krishna and Allah and Jehovah and whoever the hell else was out there.

“All I want is you,” he murmured.  “Yet all I ever do is fail you.”

“That’s bullshit,” I told him.

He shook his head.

My fingers twitched.  I was this freaking close to wringing his neck.  “Look, this is… normal.  This miscommunication stuff.  It happens all the time.  In families.”

“Family?”

“Isn’t that what you want?” I checked, lifting my left hand and deliberately brushing the ring he’d given me over his jaw.  “Isn’t that why you asked me to… er…”  I cleared my throat.  “Why you gave me this ring?”

“Partners,” he answered.

“Eh?”

“You asked what I wanted.  I want us to be partners.”

“Oh.  Well, as long as I’m wearing this ring, that’s the end game.”

He leaned back and looked at me.  His eyes were dry.  Hallelujah.

Smiling for him, I placed my hand over the pendant I’d given him.  “Right?”

His hands pressed up my back beneath my damp hair, warm against my cooling skin.  “Right,” he replied, tilting his chin up in a mute request for a kiss.

I obliged.  We were far too exhausted to manage much more, but I needed this affirmation like I needed to breathe.  Damn, but he’d scared the crap outta me.  And frustrated the daylights outta me.  And was now kissing the hell outta me.  From where I was sitting, I would have felt it if he’d gotten hard and, conversely, it would have been pretty tough to miss if I had, but it was almost three o’clock in the morning and we were both done in.

“C’mon,” Trowa murmured, reaching for the covers and tearing them loose with a jerk of his arm.  I dropped my towel on the floor and slid into bed.  He followed and wrapped me up in his arms when I shivered against the cool sheets.  “Thank you,” he murmured into my hair.

“For what, baby?”

“For forgiving me.”

“You’re not gonna do it again, are you?”

“I was raised a merc, Duo.  I might.”

“Well, if you catch yourself keeping information from me…?” I prompted, determined to give him a test he could pass.

“I’ll tell you.  I promise.”

“Then there’s nothing to forgive.”

And there wasn’t.

I laid there in my brother’s old bed, holding onto my boyfriend, my soulmate, my partner, and I thought about the shit Treize was equipped to deal out… _to my Trowa._

I thought about his plans… _to take away my Trowa._

I thought about packing our backpacks and making for the Canadian wilderness, but I knew Trowa would never agree to that.  He’d never let me give up my whole life so I could hide out in the boonies with him.  I thought about the forensics report at the house in Colchester and what interest – if any – the authorities would have in it, but discarded that avenue as well.  The more public this became, the more careful Khushrenada would become… and the more I’d have to lose.

I thought and I raged and I pondered in the dark with only Trowa’s even breaths to mark the passage of time.  Sometime around dawn, an idea came to me suddenly, miraculously.  There actually _was_ a path that did not lead Trowa to either prison or deportation.  There really was a way for me to counter that smug sonuvabitch.  Holy fuck.  I had a plan and it was gonna work.  Unfortunately, I was pretty sure Trowa wasn’t gonna like it much.

I fisted my left hand in his T-shirt until the glass ring he’d given me pressed into the flesh of my finger.  He stirred in his sleep and nuzzled my shoulder.  “Hmm…”

Tears prickled the backs of my eyes as I smiled gleefully up at the ceiling in the gloaming.  It was my turn to save Trowa.  This was my chance to finally save _someone._   I could do this.  I understood how Khushrenada’s mind worked and it was gonna be the bastard’s downfall.  Oh, yeah.  It was time to give the man _exactly_ what was coming to him.  It was time for the God of Death to come out and play.


	15. The Quest, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, we're totally getting around to that M rating now. A slightly less explicit version is available on ff.net -- http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8584311/15/Tomb-Raiders
> 
> South African English -- http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Theme music: "The Secret's in the Telling" by Dashboard Confessional
> 
> Trowa POV

I’d seen Duo with a gun in his hands before but, somehow, it had seemed considerably more harmless back then than it did now.

“Safety,” I reminded him, enunciating the word clearly so he could read it on my lips.  I doubted he’d hear me through the little foam stoppers he’d put in his ears or over the sound of other firearms being discharged up and down the shooting range.

Duo complied, thumbing the safety on before ejecting the clip and opening up the chamber to show that it was empty.  Just as our instructor had taught us this morning.  I hadn’t needed the lecture, but it was required when applying for a gun permit in New York.  I’d long since hit my target – head, heart, and belly – and passed the exam.  Duo was struggling with the 9mm semiautomatic pistol he’d chosen.  I’d been a little surprised that he hadn’t opted for something in a larger caliber, but then again he’d never been keen on wasting lead and 9mm bullets were some of the cheapest.

He reached for the switch that would pull in his paper target for a close inspection.  Checking the target and swapping it out for a fresh one wasn’t all that important in the grand scheme of practicing with a handgun, but I’d told Duo it would give his arms and shoulders a chance to rest.  He could fire hundreds of bullets one right after the other if he wanted to, but his aim was going to degrade the more tired he became.

Holding up a semiautomatic pistol might not seem like a lot of work, but it placed strain on the arm, shoulder, and back muscles.  Plus, the kick of firing the bullet was hell on inexperienced wrists, elbows, and shoulder joints, no matter the caliber.

I pointed to the shot that had hit just to the left of center mass and gave Duo a thumb’s up.  He shook his head and, imitating the shape of a gun with his index finger and thumb, pointed at the target’s forehead.  Ah.  Right.  So his aim was still off.  Well, that’s why we were practicing.  And he didn’t have to get it right today, on his first try.  I’d be surprised if he did.

As he pinned up a new target and sent it back out into the shooting gallery, I contemplated his mood.  He was just as determined now as he had been at seven o’clock this morning when he’d woken me by wiggling beneath the covers – fully clothed – and whispering in my ear that we had an appointment for a lecture on handgun safety and a practice session at a shooting range outside of town.

“All the closer ones were already full,” he’d said as I’d blinked at him.  “But I got us the last two seats in the nine a.m. class, so we’d better boogie.”

In the car, as we’d eaten our way through McDonald’s takeaway, I’d said, “Do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“When you’re firing at the target today, don’t imagine it as Khushrenada.”

His fingers had tightened around the wheel and he’d scowled, but he’d agreed to try.  I suppose an honest effort was all I could really ask for under the circumstances.

I watched as he reassembled the gun.  “Safety,” I reminded him with religious devotion.

It was a measure of how seriously he was taking this that he didn’t even roll his eyes in exasperation.  Every time he put the gun down and picked it back up, I coached him on engaging and releasing the safety.  That was how I’d learned: the captain had drilled it into me for hours upon hours and days upon days until I’d spent the night dreaming about checking the safety on my rifle again and again and again, constantly on the edge of panic, convinced that I’d forgotten to lock down the trigger and the gun was on the verge of being set off by a stray breeze.  But it was automatic for me now, and I’ve never made a mistake.  If I trained him well enough, the same would be true for Duo.

I’d long since relinquished my booth to another shooter, but Duo stayed in his right up until the end of his allotted time.  He still hadn’t managed a clean head or heart shot, but he could hit center mass an average of three out of five times.  That was bloody good for his first time with a handgun and I told him so.

“Right,” he snorted.  “My arms feel like freakin’ Jell-O.”

As I was behind the wheel for the return trip, that statement didn’t bother me in the slightest.  “And they’ll be twice as steady tomorrow for it.”

He made a small sound of acknowledgement that sounded marginally less pessimistic.

“When do you want to go back?”  He hadn’t passed today, but I felt sure he would the next time he tried or, at the latest, the time following that.

He sighed.  “I dunno.  Let’s work on offense on the mat for a couple of days.”

So that was what we did.  I had a tutoring session with Sally on Monday, but Duo and I hit the gym on Tuesday afternoon.  He had a decent right hook and upper cut.  His jabs from both arms were solid.

“You need to use your left more,” I told him.  “You want to strike your opponent’s strong side first and debilitate him there if possible so that you only have his weak side to deal with after the initial volley.”

“Who taught you all this stuff?” he asked as he pounded the padded target I was holding up: left hook, right jab, left upper cut.

“The captain, mostly.”

“He teach you about interrogation, too?”

I winced just as Duo’s fist connected with the target again.  Bugger.  He remembered what I’d told him at the temple while we’d been waiting for Khushrenada’s men to brace the door open and enter with Duo’s father.  “No.  Sometimes we’d team up with another troupe for really big contracts.  They were… more hands on than the Bartons.”

Which was why, after the captain had found me staring wide-eyed at one man as he’d been miming his way through a lecture on the most effective ways to inflict pain upon a prisoner, I’d been ordered to steer clear of the lot of them.  I’d been maybe eight years old at the time.  It had happened at least one summer before I’d been given my machete scar.

My belly muscles twitched in remembrance of the injury.  Although I couldn’t recall getting or even suffering from the injuries to my back, I still remembered every moment of my first encounter with a machete.  There’d been a night raid on the compound we’d been guarding; I’d been delivering fresh canteens of water and coffee to the guys on duty when I’d been attacked.  The only reason I’d survived was because I’d rolled into the shadows and the enemy had assumed I was as good as dead.  Bryce had been the one to take the man down not thirty seconds later as I’d watched from where I was hiding, biting back my whimpers of pain and blinking through wave after wave of dizziness.  Martins and the captain had followed my blood trail and found me a few blurry minutes later.  It had taken them hours to patch me up.

“Another centimeter deeper and you’d be in for a long, painful death,” the captain had admonished me.  “You jump back further and faster next time or we’ll let you bleed out right where you lie!”

I’d never seen the captain look so cruel and it had scared me.  Only now, looking back on it, could I tell how terrified he’d been.  I’d given him a bloody bad skrik, and he’d skriked me back so I’d come away unscathed in the future.  And it had worked: from that moment forth, I’d remembered his anger and had tended toward caution no matter how mundane my assignment.

“So, you guys never, uh, questioned prisoners?” Duo ventured, pausing to shake out his arms.

I snapped back to the present.  “No.  We fought intruders and held captives for our employer to deal with.”

“Any of ‘em ever go back to where they came from?”

I took a deep breath.  “The lucky ones were offered work if they switched sides.”

“What separated the lucky ones from the unlucky ones?” Duo wanted to know.

I swallowed thickly.  “Surviving the interrogation.”

A merc didn’t work for land barons without hearing things through closed doors, without seeing what was left of his boss’ enemies once they’d stumbled into his clutches.  That oke from the other troupe had been right about which methods were most effective for making a prisoner cooperate, making him suffer, or making an example out of him for the others.

More than ten years have passed since I’d been introduced to the realities of interrogation, but I knew I was never going to forget a bit of it.  Not as long as I lived.  I prayed that I’d never have to use the knowledge.  I prayed that I’d never be tempted to, either.

“Hey,” Duo whispered, “you OK?”

I lowered myself onto one of the benches beside the free weights, shaken.  I didn’t often let myself think about these things.  Whenever I did, one shadowy moment kicked open the door to another and then another and another.  Like dominoes falling in a line until I was surrounded and outnumbered.  For most people, reminiscing was pointless but harmless.  For me, it was the gateway to pain and helplessness and, I suspected, eventual madness.  But Duo was here, standing just a step away, and knowing that helped to keep me in this moment.  I focused on and clung to his presence like a rock climber looking down into a bottomless abyss.

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

“For asking or…?”

“Both,” he replied, somehow knowing what I was getting at: he was both sorry that he’d asked and sorry that I knew anything about the topic at all.

He sat down beside me.  When his shoulder brushed mine, I leaned into it and just breathed for a minute.  He didn’t ask me anything else about my past after that.  Nor did he offer to listen if I needed to talk.  His silence was, strangely enough, both an apology and an invitation.  Perhaps, one day, when I had few more blissful memories to counter the bad, I would tell him more.

I sighed out a breath, letting it carry the memories away on its wispy tide, and smiled.  “No apologies.  No regrets,” I said, repeating the words he’d given to me back in February just after he’d become my lover.

“OK,” he answered.  We passed a pair of wry and knowing grins between us, and then we got back to the mat.

Wednesday afternoon found us in the gym once more only this time I was determined to get Duo to take our sparring session personally.

“Don’t do it, babe,” he warned as I made a swipe for his rope of hair.

He circled around, stepping right where I’d anticipated he would.  With a timely lunge, I grabbed the end of his braid.  “Or you’ll do what?” I challenged, wrapping the plait around my wrist, reeling him in.

“This,” he answered, charging me before I’d drawn up all the slack, hooking both hands behind the backs of my knees, and yanking my feet out from under me.

I hit the mat so hard I felt my ribs compress.  Fuck.  Duo had just bounced me like I was a fokken rubber ball.  I coughed and my eyes watered as I tried to re-inflate my lungs.

“Dude, I told you not to go there,” he said, leaning back to crouch over my knees.  I felt his braid slide free of my grasp and I let it go.  He’d proved his point.

With a twitch of his head, his braid fell down his back once more.  Smiling gently, he knelt down next to me on one knee.  “I’d say I’m sorry, but you told me not to hold back today.”

That I had.  And I’d purposefully antagonized him just to see his reaction.  I was sure I still hadn’t seen all of it.  Duo didn’t want to injure me.  Our sparring matches only showed me the tip of the iceberg.

He held out a hand to help me up and I took it.  “C’mon,” he said, tugging me toward the edge of the mat.  “School’s out for today.”

“Since when are you the instructor?” I wheezed, still working on establishing a sustainable rhythm for breathing.

He winked.  “Since I dumped the previous one on his sexy ass.  Let’s hit the shower.  I’ll wash your back.”

I opened my mouth to object.

“Gently,” he added with a smile that could make me forgive him anything.

The next morning, when the alarm went off, I twitched awake, reached over to shut it off, and groaned.  “Bugger and fuck,” I muttered.  My back was a solid block of pain.

“Stay,” Duo ordered, sliding out of bed and returning an immeasurable moment later with something from the bathroom.  He straddled my hips, worked my shirt up my back, and then he was coating my skin and scars with freezing cold gel.

I winced into the pillow and tried not to tear it in two with my clenching fingers.

“It gets warm in a minute,” Duo promised, but I could already feel it heating my shoulders.  “Jesus, you are black, blue, green, and purple, baby.”

“Are you calling me a peacock?”

He snorted out a laugh.  “Where’s your tail?”

“Still at the cleaners,” I retorted, “which was where you took me yesterday.”

“Trowa—”

I cut him off.  “No.  Well done.  I know now that you can hold your own, and I needed to know that.  Thank you.”

“Damn.  There’s no one else in the entire freakin’ universe who would thank me for beating the hell out of them.”

I turned my head to the side so he could see me grin.  “Makes me easy to buy for.”

“Right.  There’ll be a lifetime supply of Icy Hot under the Christmas tree for you next year.”

 _Next year._   “Sounds good,” I answered through my widening smile.

The day progressed with painful slowness.  Odin noticed my less-than-optimal mobility at lunch and offered advice from his days of playing football for his local high school – back before he’d been expelled – and Marie May speculated on the cause.

“Staircase bruises?” she asked.

Frowning in confusion, I drew a breath to—

“Don’t ask,” Odin interjected.

Ah.  Right.  “Have you ever seen any of the standard rugby tackles?” I asked her.  Interestingly enough, the maneuver Duo had used to take me down yesterday was common to the sport.

Marie May shook her head.

“Keep asking and you’ll get a demonstration,” I promised darkly.

She smiled and bit her lip.  I did not want to imagine what she was scheming. 

When I pulled up to Duo’s school, he jogged around to the driver’s side and opened my door.  “Give your back and shoulders a rest, babe,” he said.  “I’ll get us home.”

That was exactly what he did: Duo got us home and then he got me in bed.  I stretched out on my stomach and let Duo work my T-shirt up and over my head.  He pressed a kiss to the base of my neck before smearing more of that ice cold lotion on my skin.

“Looks worse,” he fretted.

“And it’ll feel worse before it gets better.”

“Damn it.”

“I asked for it.”

“And I was dumb enough to let you have it.  Sheesh.  Hey, now!  What the hell are you smiling about?”

My grin widened.  “Nothing,” I said, instead of telling him how much I liked having him take care of me.

“You’re in an awfully good mood for a guy who looks so damn awful.”

I’d have to trust his word on that.  To be honest, I didn’t give rocks about my bruises.  I could feel the heat of the ointment soaking into my flesh, relaxing me.  Duo’s hands moved in slow, hypnotic circles and my attention followed them like a cheetah watches a herd of springbok.  His hands could lull me into a trance if I let them, but I didn’t.  His touch conducted my thoughts up from his warm palms along the lean muscles of his arms to his shoulders, the soft skin just below his ears, the scent of his shampoo, the sharpness of his teeth.

Duo was gorgeous and dangerous.  He might not be proficient with a gun yet, but he could handle himself in one-on-one combat.  Be it a gym mat or an icy parking lot.  He was strong in his own right.  And not just in a fight.  The image of him dancing with Hilde, lifting her up and dipping her low, flashed across my memory.  My lover was both powerful and gentle.  My next breath left me on a shudder.

“Trowa?  You OK?” he whispered and I moaned softly in response.

A moment of hesitation followed as he seemed to absorb my mood.  Then his palms lifted from my battered shoulders and his fingers trailed down my spine.  I rocked my hips up into his touch, nudging him lower as I replied, “I’ve got every reason to be.”

“Is that so?”  He drew a slightly hesitant circle on the small of my back with a single, warm fingertip.

I bit my lip and nodded.  “Ja.”

His knuckles joined in, aimlessly sketching invisible designs on my skin.  I pressed my forehead into the pillow and surrendered.  “Duo…”

His hands flattened and their heat seeped into me through my skin.  Softly, he whispered, “Don’t let me hurt you again, OK, baby?”

I nodded helplessly.  The heat in my shoulders and upper back from the ointment was countered by the slow-building warmth in my gut and lower.  I spread my thighs a bit and rocked up into him, brushing his crotch with my arse.

“Fuck, Trowa.  You are so hot,” he groaned, burrowing a hand beneath my hips.  “Can I?” he asked, palming me through the front of my denims.  “I’ll make you feel better.”

I was nodding in response to his whispered promise before he even finished making it.  “Yes,” I choked out and, when he sat up, I lifted my hips so he could undo the button and zipper.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Trowa.  I want you so bad.”

He could have me.  He could have whatever he wanted.  I endured his torturously slow progress as he eased my denims and shorts over my hips, down my thighs, over my knees and calves and then, finally, he tossed them at the foot of the bed.  I parted my legs before he could straddle me again and sighed when his warm hands began to massage their way up my legs.

“Duo—”

“Just relax, baby.  I’ll take care of everything.”

I felt his breath puff against my lower back and then his lips brushed my scars.  I pushed back against him, needing to feel more than just these ghostly touches, and when he reached beneath my hips again to adjust my cock against the mattress, I moaned.

“Yes, Trowa,” he encouraged, massaging his way up the backs of my thighs.  I panted and rolled my hips, wanting him to hurry, wanting this feeling to go on forever.

And then his palms were hot against my arse and I wanted him to touch me there, to be inside me, to mark me, to make me his.  I’d never wanted anything more in my life.

“Duo?”  God, how did I begin to ask him for this?

“Hm?” he murmured, rubbing and squeezing the muscles beneath his hands with sureness that made me throb all the way down to my toes.

“I…  Can we…  Is it all right if…?”  Bugger all.  Where the fuck was my mobile phone?

Duo’s hands moved to my hips in a greedy caress.  I thrust into the mattress helplessly.  “If what, baby?  Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head.

“You want me to help you roll over?”

I shook my head again.  “Later, maybe.  I don’t…  I want…”  I reached out toward the bureau drawer though I was too far away from it to do more than brush the tips of my fingers over the handle.

The firm grip on my hips loosened in reaction as Duo caught my meaning.  “Baby, are you sure?”

I nodded and thrust back against him.

“Oh, fuck.”

He sounded nervous and torn.  I swallowed down my disappointment.  I’d tell him to never mind.  He wasn’t ready and—

“I could hurt you,” he whispered.

“You won’t,” I told him.  “I want this.  I trust you.”

“Jesus, Trowa, look at me.”

I tilted my chin down so I could see him over my shoulder.  He was flushed all the way down his bare chest and I wanted him so badly—

“You have to tell me to stop,” he panted, “if it hurts.”

Of course it would hurt, but I was throbbing so much now that I could only imagine the pain as a kind of relief, a lancing that would take this full-to-bursting pressure away.  I stretched my thighs wider and Duo glanced down at the motion, licking his lips and squeezing his eyes shut briefly.  His lips moved in silence, too quickly and minutely for me to read the words, and I was reminded of his first lesson with shooting a rifle.  He’d whispered something then, too.  A name or a prayer.  I still didn’t know what.

Before I could ask, he was reaching over me, the front of his denims rubbing against my bare arse as he fumbled the drawer open.  I sucked in a breath at the feel of the heavy weave, the stiff line of the cloth-covered zipper, and the hard bulge beneath it.

A needy sound eked out from between my gritted teeth and Duo’s hips thrust against me.  “Ah!”

“Too rough?” he checked, braced over me, covering me, sheltering me.

“N-n-no.”  I moved against him in return.  I was naked and he wasn’t and, ah God, I wanted him.  “Ple—” I began.

“Shh,” he soothed.  “No please and thank-you’s in bed, baby.  Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

My entire body coiled tighter at the words.  I flushed with heat from the base of my spine up to my scalp.  “Stretch me,” I mouthed.

He pressed a kiss to the back of my arm.  “OK.”

The lubricant hadn’t been opened yet and I had no idea how he managed it with only one hand.  The other was kneading my arse firmly the entire time.  And then cool, slick fingers dipped between my cheeks and slid lower and lower with such painful hesitance that I almost howled, but then he was touching me there, massaging me like he had that first time in the shower months ago.  I forgot about the bruises across my shoulders.  Ah, God, I could feel him like I could feel the vibrations from the piano coloring the air; he was playing me just like that _._

I moved with him, waiting for the first push, anticipating it, wanting it so badly I was ready to beg for it.  But no, Duo didn’t want me to beg.  I had to tell him—

“In,” I ordered and groaned when one digit pressed gently but firmly against the muscle it was working and ventured deeper.

It felt so strange.  And it was strange that the feeling itself was not enough to make me want it.  What I wanted was the picture of him, kneeling between my thighs, denims unzipped and shorts thrust down, his length hard and flushed as he leaned over me and pressed into my body.

“Deeper,” I panted, caught up in the fantasy, and he obliged, pressing and massaging until—

My head snapped back.  My hips jerked.  My heart stopped.  My entire body thundered with the reverberation of something – some chord – struck deep inside me.

“OK?” he rasped.

All I could do was pant… and thrust against his touch, gasping when I felt it again and again and again.

“Right here?”  He pressed a little harder, working circles into my flesh and riding that place inside me mercilessly.

“Ah G-g-god.  D-duo!”  He laid me bare and strung me out until I was dying to come, but I was sure I’d die if I did.

I sensed it when Duo leaned over my back, felt it when he nuzzled my ear, heard it when he whispered, “I wanna taste you so bad.  Is it ok?”

I’d have to roll onto my back and I was loathe to let go of this feeling, but the need in his voice was my undoing.  I nodded and felt it as he slowly withdrew, and then he was gently coaching me onto my back.  I should have felt more pain from my shoulders, but I was so hard—

Duo shucked off the remainder of his clothes and I’d never seen him so ready.  He was flushed so dark.  So hard.  Leaking.  And then he was sinking down between my thighs, seeking out my slack mouth and kissing me with the kind of slow, deep, appreciative hunger that makes you lick your spoon twice over for the last drop.  His fingers were cool and slick once more when he reached between us.

I moaned in welcome and then he was sliding back inside, searching for that hidden key which made me incoherent.  He found it and I couldn’t continue the kiss.  I needed to breathe.  Breathe and feel and want and—

He kissed my neck, rubbed his palm over my chest, and then his hips slid back as he moved lower.  I opened my eyes and met his gaze as he grasped me in his hand, as I thrust in the thrall of his touch deep inside, and then he lowered his mouth.

He kissed me.  Oh God, he kissed me like he’d kissed my mouth: soft licks and lingering suction, surging tongue and seeking lips.  I moved helplessly against his mouth, felt the edge of his teeth press against me and I almost came.

“Close,” I warned him.  And then he took me in deep and the observation was moot.  I came in his mouth, shuddering and breathless, my heart bursting from my chest.  I called his name, grasped his wrist to keep him within me and held on.

When I blinked open my eyes, he was above me, braced on one elbow.  His fingers trailed over my shoulder, back and forth.  I was still holding his other hand tightly in place and I could feel – against the crease between my thigh and crotch – that he was hard.

“Duo,” I began.

“Hm?” he replied, holding my gaze as he lowered his face to my chest and licked me.

I hissed with renewed desire.  Inside me, he crooked his finger and I saw stars again.  “Condom,” I told him, bending my knees to accommodate him more fully.

He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed thickly.  “OK, just… I need a minute.”

I let him withdraw from me and sit back on his heels.  Fuck, he was magnificent.  His chest heaved with his breaths as he tried to calm himself a bit.  He cleaned off his hand, reached down to adjust his sac, and then opened the box of condoms.  I was transfixed as he rolled it on carefully, biting his lip in either a show of restraint or concentration.  He was getting ready for me.  For _me._

I was panting by the time he applied more lubricant to his sheathed length and when he leaned forward to massage the rest of it onto me, I rolled my hips up, groaned when his other hand fitted itself along the back of my thigh and pressed my leg upward.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Duo reminded me, his eyes burning, and then I felt him there for the first time, a mindless pressure driven by desire and it was me he wanted and fuck but I wanted him only him only this now Duo now—!

“S-s-slowly,” he stuttered as he leaned in.

Oh God, it burned as he entered, but I didn’t stop wanting him.  I moaned, looked into his eyes, had my breath stolen by the sheer lust and pleasure in his expression.  He gripped my hip hard.

“Slowly,” he mouthed and then gritted his teeth.  “So slow… and tight, and you’re so hot, baby.  Oh fuck.  Trowa.  I can’t stand it!”  He was almost sobbing.

I couldn’t tell if he really was impossibly hard or if it was just that I wasn’t feeling him with my hands or mouth this time.  I throbbed, both with his slow, cautious entrance and in sympathy for how excruciating this must be for him.  I lifted the leg he wasn’t bracing up and rested my heel against his lower back.  I was completely open now and Duo noticed.

“Shit, baby, you shouldn’ta done that ‘cuz it’s killing me not to just give in and fuck you ‘til you scream.”

Picturing that, I shuddered.  “I trust you,” I whispered and heard him let out an explosive breath.  I felt his sac press against my arse.  He was inside.  Completely.  We fit.  Lock and key.  He was sweating, trembling.  I tried to breathe around the feel of him, uncompromising and brutish.  He pressed his mouth to my chest again and again, distracting me, collecting me, silently asking me to tell him when or if he could—

“Move,” I told him in a quiet tone that surprised me with its confidence.

He whimpered and thrust his hips experimentally, moaning and clawing at the sheets with his free hand.  “It’s no good.  I’m gonna come if I do that again.”

“All right,” I soothed.  “Talk to me.”

He sobbed out a breath, a plea for help.

I reached up and smoothed his bangs away from his face.  “Tell me what you were thinking when I showed you how to shoot that rifle in Egypt.”

He snorted softly.  “I was thinking, ‘Shit, this guy’s gonna kick my ass if I drop this thing.’”

I chuckled.  “Nice to know I made an impression.”

“Oh, God.  You did.  I can’t believe it took me three days to figure out why I was obsessed with finding out where you kept your handgun.”

“Why were you?”

“Because I was checking you out, damn it.”  He lifted his chin, opened his eyes, and grinned with pure joy and love.  I reached for his shoulders and slid my fingers into his hair.  As I did so, his expression sobered and I saw heat and desire flare in his eyes.  “Trowa…”

He rocked his hips again and I shuddered at the feel of him, still so hard and so deep.

“If it’s bad, I can stop.”

It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t even burning so much.  It was just really strange.  But it was also befokken sexy.  Duo was fucking me.  I gasped as I felt myself harden with record-breaking speed.  “Don’t you dare stop,” I growled.

“Copy that,” he replied, his lips twitching briefly into a grin, and then he was drawing back and pushing in.  “That feel OK?” he almost squeaked, sweat dewing at his temples.

I nodded.

“Jesus.  Help me out here, Trowa,” he beseeched, shifting a bit before once again pulling back and then sliding forward.  “Where is it?”

“What?  Oh.”  He was looking for—  I groaned.  “There.  I think.”

He paused, chewed his lip a bit more, and then pressed deeper _just there._

“Ahh!!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t.  Move.”  I panted and blinked and tried to grasp onto a single coherent thought.  Fuck all.  I’d thought it would feel the same as it had earlier, not amplified a hundred times.  Finally, I managed to draw a breath, wet my lips, and say, “Ja.  Right there, bokkie.”

“Does it hurt?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Tell me what to do.”

I inhaled deeply.  “Try it again.”

He did.  I felt my back arch, my skin tingle, my jaw clench.  “Again,” I whispered, meeting his wide eyes.  He was worried and scared and I wanted so badly for this feeling to be pleasure that, perhaps, my very wish made it so.

I shouted through gritted teeth and confessed, “I think it’s good.”

“You _think?”_

“Yes.  It’s good.  I need it.”  I pressed a hand over his heart, wishing I could convey both the incomprehensible complexity and indescribable simplicity of the sensation to him.  “I need you.”

He groaned and the worry bled from his expression.  “Shit, baby, that’s good to hear but it’s not gonna help me hold out.”

“Then don’t.”

He rocked cautiously inside of me, touching me on that key which destroyed me and remade me with every motion of his hips.  It was almost too much.  Almost.  In a way, I was glad that Duo only lasted a few minutes longer because I couldn’t take anymore.  There was too much sensation, too much pressure building up with no release in sight, but watching him come was so unbelievably sexy.  He gave that to me freely, just as, moments later, he wrapped his fingers around my cock, told me how sexy I was, and how hot and tight and perfect and how he loved my taste and my scent and _me—_

I came so hard that I could feel the jets shooting up my belly all the way to my chest.  I clutched Duo’s shoulders as he leaned in and, still panting from his own climax inside me, sucked choice splatters off of my skin.  I would tell him later how lekker he was.

“Oh… oh God.  Holy shit,” Duo muttered, moving shakily to crash beside me on the mattress.  “I can’t move.  Just gonna lay here forever.  That cool?”

“It’s cool,” I somehow answered, curling around him.

He reached over and petted my thigh, tracing the knife scar along the back.  “Cool.”

We slept.  And then we woke to empty stomachs and a sticky, crispy mess.  “You take a shower first,” he offered.  “I’ll clean this up.”  The sheets would need to be changed again.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I objected.

“I’ve got it,” he insisted.  “And I’ll meet you in there in five minutes.”

I gave in but not without a kiss first.  “Five minutes and counting.”

He smirked briefly.  When his mirth faded, it revealed eyes wide with concern.  “Are you really OK?”

“I really am,” I assured him.  I was certain that I’d be sore tomorrow, but—  “I’m looking forward to Round Two.”

He grinned.  “Yeah, well, maybe I should pencil you in for next Thursday, four p.m.?”

I smacked him on the arse and headed for the shower.

To my surprise and astonishment, when I dropped him off at school the next morning, he placed his hand on my thigh and darted in for a quick kiss.

“What was that for?” I asked, holding my breath as the world kept on revolving around us.

He shrugged ruefully.  “For luck.”

I reached for him, cradling the back of his head as I returned the favor.  “As well,” I replied huskily.  “Call me if the boykies give you any trouble.”

“Right.  You can come and cheer for me while I beat them to whimpering pulp.”

“Now that’s a jol.”

When Duo shut the car door, he was still laughing.  I drove off, lips and fingers tingling.  He’d kissed me in public.  He’d let _me_ kiss _him_ in public.  I just… I couldn’t believe it.

I daydreamed my way through school.  I didn’t care that the top edge of the seat back hit me right at the lower boundary of my bruises or that the seats themselves were bloody unkind to tender arses.

When Marie May started singing dirty limericks about cabin boys shimmying up the main mast, I catapulted a spoonful of mashed potatoes at her.  I’d never seen Odin laugh before… hadn’t seen him cry, either, but he did both as he manfully ignored the toes Marie May had crushed in retaliation for his ungentlemanly amusement at her predicament.  I thought she looked cute with mashed potatoes in her hair although I wasn’t suicidal enough to tell her so.

As I waited for Duo at my usual parking space, I tried to figure out how to relate the highlights of my day in a way that captured all the best parts.  By the time the bell rang, I still hadn’t managed to really put words to Marie May’s mischievousness or Odin’s latent humor.  Duo knew about the both of them, of course, but until today I’d never considered asking Duo if he’d like to meet them.  How odd.

A car door slammed nearby, jarring me from my thoughts.  I looked up and frowned.  The school doors were no longer being held open by the horde of escaping students.  They had swung shut and were remaining that way for seconds at a time.  School was out for the day.

And Duo wasn’t here.

I tried to ignore the tightening in my gut as I pulled out my phone and dialed Duo’s number.  “Come on.  Pick up,” I urged, glaring at all the carefree, laughing students that had invaded the car park.  As Duo’s phone rang and rang and rang, I noticed a thing or two about the crowd: it was too thin and all the kids seemed younger than Duo and Hilde…

 _Hilde._  I hung up and called her next.

“Hey, Trowa.  What’s up?  You guys wanna come over?  We’re having tacos and—”

“Why weren’t you in school today?” I interrupted.

“Wh—oh.  It’s Senior Skip Day.  All the seniors mutinied.”

I paused, thinking.  “So you haven’t seen Duo today?”

“Nope.  Slept in until noon.  Did the doofus forget to tell you about today?”

“Ja.  Dropped him off as usual.”

“Well, he probably took the train home.”

It was a logical explanation, but it did not explain why Duo hadn’t emailed me and asked me not to pick him up from school.  Perhaps I thanked Hilde before I hung up.  Perhaps I didn’t.  I was beyond caring at this point.

I drove home, knowing that it was the first place I ought to look and that he was probably there and caught up in preparing for this weekend’s conference call which was why he’d forgotten to tell me he was—

I stopped and stared, my arm still outstretched and holding open his bedroom door.  The bed was neatly made.  In the center of the quilt sat a white envelope.  From here, I could see that my name had been written on it.

The dread coiling in my gut squeezed my innards until I thought I would throw up.  I stared at the envelope.  My hands started shaking.  I fisted them.

_Please, no._

I did not give my feet permission to move, and yet I found myself kneeling on the bed with the envelope in my hands.  The bedclothes were rumpled as if I’d dived onto them.  I tore the seal open and yanked out the paper inside.

I stared at it for a moment before it occurred to me that I wasn’t even reading it.  I took a deep breath and did so.

_Trowa,_

_Don’t panic.  I’m fine and I’ll be back in three days.  I know what I’m doing.  I just need you to trust me and know that I love you._

_Duo_

_P.S. I’m still wearing your ring and I’m not gonna take it off._

I sat the letter down before I crushed it in my trembling hands.  I wished like hell that I didn’t understand, but I was very much afraid I did.  He’d gone to find that Goddamn half of the key.  He was taking care of our Khushrenada problem.

How dare he!?  How could he just chuck off and leave me here and do something so absolutely doff with no backup?  We’re supposed to be _partners!_

I fought my way off of the bed, ignoring the way my boot tread caught in the fabric, and charged into my bedroom.  I was going after him.  I was going to find him and talk sense into him.  I stuffed two changes of clothes, all my money, and necessities into my old rucksack.  Damn the bloody roller bag.  I couldn’t hike with it and I wasn’t interested in pretending to be someone I wasn’t.  I was a merc.  I was Duo’s lover.  And I was mad as hell.

It wasn’t until I was standing in front of the door, keys in hand, that I realized I didn’t know where to go to begin looking for him.  The airport or the port authority?  And how was I going to find out where Duo had gone?  And even if I did somehow figure it out, how far could my funds get me?  I might be able to manage a last-minute ticket to somewhere, but I’d burn through my savings and credit card limit rapidly.  And if I guessed wrong and Duo wasn’t there, I’d be stranded – helpless, _useless_ – while he was God only knows where doing the same thing – looking into the same myth – that had gotten his father killed—

Fuck.  Bugger and fuck and _fuck all._

I slammed my fist against the door.  “Think!” I hissed at myself, struggling to focus.  Who would know where Duo was going?  Who would he tell?  Who would be watching—

I stiffened.  "Khushrenada.”  Of course.

“No,” I rasped.  I couldn’t call that bliksem brak.  I ought to call the captain.  But what could he do?  Hold my fokken hand while I stared at the wall, worrying about Duo?

And then Duo’s words from prom night came back to me: _“Keep your friends close and you enemies closer.”_

Of course.  _Of course._

I barreled back into the apartment and crashed into Duo’s father’s bedroom.  I launched myself at the closet, tore through the contents, and located the garment bag that held the tuxedo Duo had worn just last Saturday.  I yanked the zipper down and fumbled my way through the pockets of the jacket and then then the trousers.

“Fuck!” I snarled, gripping the garments in my hands.  But no.  Don’t give up.  Keep looking.  It has to be here!  I shoved my hand into the bag, dragging my fingers along the bottom and—

A corner of stiff paper stabbed me beneath my fingernail.  “Got you,” I growled, pulling the business card from the depths of the bag.  I studied the address and phone number.  My stomach lurched and rolled.  The thought of what I was about to do churned the bile in my belly, but there were no other options.  Duo hadn’t left me with any other choice.

 _“You don’t trust me,”_ I’d told him just Saturday night, _“you told me I took your choice away.”_

As I’d told him often enough, turnabout was fair play.  I just couldn’t believe he’d turn things around like this.  I thought of the iPod, the songs he wouldn’t describe, everything I could sense he wasn’t telling me.  I remembered making love to him in the kitchen in Colchester.  I’d thought he still trusted me.  And then our argument on the night of prom - he’d sat on my lap, naked and vulnerable, and insisted he trusted me completely.  Needed me absolutely.  Less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d made love to me.  Been so careful and passionate.  He’d kissed me in the car just this morning.

A kiss goodbye?

I bit the inside of my cheek.  Hard.  I didn’t know what to think except that I needed to be with him now.  Right now.  And there was only one person I could think of who would know where he was.

I reached for my mobile and dialed.

After a moment, someone on the other end picked up and asked how they could help me.

I answered, “You can tell Mr. Treize Khushrenada that Trowa Barton is calling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Artistic License usage: I’ve never been to a shooting range or applied for a gun permit, so bear with me here, folks. I’m embellishing on impressions from movies and TV shows.
> 
> Also, I was so not planning on having their relationship step up to the next level yet, but when Duo dumped Trowa on the mat, my Trowa Muse was all like, “Now. It has to happen now.” And since Duo had no objections, we ran with it. As for why, I think it’s because after Duo takes him down on the mat, Trowa knows that Duo will not hesitate to defend himself, no matter what. Of course, before this, Trowa knew that Duo could take care of himself, but now he knows that Duo will do what has to be done: Trowa trusts Duo not just with Trowa’s future, but with Duo’s, too. Or maybe I’m just really overanalyzing this and my Trowa Muse was having a hormonal horny moment. Eh. Whatever.


	16. The Quest, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Treize Khushrenada POV, present tense (for reasons)
> 
> Theme music: "Scream" by Antje Duvekot

“Mr. Barton,” I greet, steepling my fingers and giving the young man my undivided attention.  He has earned it, after all.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The one green eye he chooses to show the world blinks slowly.  This is not a coy gesture; he is holding onto his patience by a very thin thread.  How entertaining it would be to watch it fray and snap, but that would be counter-productive.  What a shame.

“If you don’t already know, then I’m wasting my time,” he answers evenly and turns to go.

The security personnel stationed on either side of my office door – the same men who had confiscated all of Mr. Barton’s weapons – will not let my guest pass without a signal from me.  I have no intention of giving it.  I give a little ground, instead, and let him call my bluff.  I’m sure I’ll gain it all back presently.  Plus interest.

I remark, “Lord Dominic Maxwell left the country on a private jet this morning.  How odd that he didn’t invite you along.  Why do you think that is?”

It is the perfect question to have asked.  Barton’s spine stiffens, rooting him to my office carpet.  He is probably glaring at the door.  I’ll consult the security cameras later if time permits.

When he doesn’t reply, I dig a bit deeper, “Doesn’t he trust you?”

That gets Barton’s attention.  He looks back over his shoulder at me.  His laugh is almost inaudible.  “Who would?  Given my past.”

Ah, now this is unexpected – a man falling on his own sword.  And so soon into the game!  He must be desperate.  Why?  If he were after the same thing that I am, he wouldn’t be here in the first place.  He cannot win against me.  My resources are vast.  He can neither run nor hide.  I could own him in a moment.  Surely, he knows this.  And yet, here he is.

I tap my fingers against my lips in thought.  And then it comes to me.  “Backfired, did it?  Your plan to get him to fall in love with you?”

Barton’s hands fist.  I duck my head as I stand so that he won’t see the flash of victory in my eyes.

“He left you safe at home?” I phrase it as an educated guess even though I know it isn’t a guess at all.  I’m right.  I can see it in the flexing of his jaw muscles.  If looks could kill, I’d be in a wooden box right now.

“Something like that,” he growls.

Something exactly like that.  Dominic Maxwell had left his lover behind in New York in a bid to exclude him from our game as much as possible despite the fact that it is Barton’s future which is on the line.  But what’s more, Barton’s presence here is an assurance; Maxwell is confident that he’ll retrieve the other half of the key.  He’s confident that Trowa Barton will be in no danger from me.

I  scan the young mercenary.  Just how much might Maxwell have confided in him regarding his late mother’s research?

Absorbing Barton’s clear frustration, I decide the answer to that question is _none._   If Barton had been told anything useful, Maxwell would have either kept him close at his side or secreted him away in a remote and unknown location.  And even if the latter had come to pass and Barton had dared to rebel against his keeper’s wishes, I surely wouldn’t be the young man’s first choice for a traveling companion.  No, he is here because he doesn’t have a clue as to where to begin looking for his disobedient, billionaire boyfriend.

Well, I suppose it’s up to me to make sure Maxwell’s listless, green-eyed mercenary doesn’t get himself into any trouble while his little lord is gallivanting around the globe.  Now to discuss terms.  Nothing is completely free, after all.

“It sounds like the two of you have a lot to discuss.  So, I ask again, why are you _here?”_

“You want something,” he informs me.  “I want something.”

“What is it you think I want?”  I watch him carefully although my expression is open.

“What you didn’t get in Laos,” he says, returning fire.

He scores a hit with that jab.  I let it through in order to draw him in.  “Do you even know what that is?”

He shrugs.  I can see that he considers lying.  It’s a brief thought and poorly concealed.  When I arch my brows, he caves.  So easy.

“An artifact.  A half of some sort of key that’s supposed to open a legendary gateway.”  He nearly scoffs.  If he were a man possessed of less self-discipline, he would have.

I smile, amused.  “You don’t believe in legends?”

“What do you think?”

A man like Barton believes in what he can see and touch.  He believes in riches that can cross the palm of his hand.  He believes in keeping the bird in hand rather than risking all on what may be lurking in the bushes.  And his bird has escaped its cage.  He has nothing but disdain for the artifact which has disrupted his comfortable lifestyle.  Good.

“I’m a very busy man, Mr. Barton, so let’s speak plainly.  What do you want?”

“Dominic Maxwell.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“Your fokken fairytale ending.”

I laugh.  “You think you can convince our young Lord Maxwell to hand over the artifact I’m seeking?”

“You said it yourself: he’s in love with me.  One way or another, he will hand it over.  And when he does, you leave him be.  Forever.  Agreed?”

“You’re a terrible negotiator,” I inform him, marveling at the depth of his ignorance.  If he’d had any inkling of what the gateway is purported to provide its master, he would have taken this information to one of my enemies, but I doubt the possibility had even occurred to him.  Trowa Barton is so marvelously untrained.  A blank slate.  Oh, what I could do with him.  The possibilities are endless but time is not.  Unfortunately.  “What makes you think I’d willingly remove myself from Lord Maxwell’s life?”

At this point, a rash man would dare me to name my price, but we both know he has little to bargain with.  Besides, I have no interest in anything other than what he has mentioned.  But I enjoy stretching it out, dangling the prize just out of reach.

He snarls, “I’ve invested nearly three and a half years in Dominic.  He’s mine.”

His tone intrigues me.  I think I once heard that exact timbre in the booming roar of a lion announcing the boundaries of his range on the African savannah.  It’s too bad that particular memory hasn’t been as flawlessly preserved as the creature’s pelt, which even now hangs on the wall in my holiday retreat in Ethiopia.

I let Barton mark his territory.  Once I have what I want, I’ll have little use for young Maxwell and I’ll still have both him and his South African boyfriend on a very tight leash thanks to that spectacular find at the site in Laos.  It’s conceivable that I could afford to be generous at some future point in time.  And, if not, well… it can’t hurt to entertain the notion for now.

“Yes, Maxwell is quite a catch.  So is the fortune that comes along with him,” I sum up.  When he doesn’t bother to profess his undying love for Victor Maxwell’s surviving son, I see a kindred spirit of sorts, even if he is a bit near-sighted.  But he’s young yet.  One day, he might dare to set his sights on grander things.  He’s certainly no competition for me now.  “I wish you luck, Mr. Barton.  From one businessman to another.”

He nods and waits for my verdict.  I give it.  Reaching for my phone, I press the intercom button.  “Nichols, have Captain Tsuberov prepare another seat on the plane.”

“Yes, sir.”

I disconnect and give Mr. Barton a friendly smile.  “I’m just heading for the airport now.  Shall we share a car?”

It’s not really a request and, by the look in his eyes, he knows it.  Trowa Barton is my willing hostage now, but he thinks he’s coming along to ensure that I follow through with my end of our little deal.  He’s welcome to believe whatever he likes so long as he cooperates and provides himself as handy leverage against the young man flying over the Atlantic at this very moment.  And to think, I’d been on the verge of sending a half dozen men out to the Maxwell residence to acquire his mercenary lover when Barton had called.  How serendipitous.  How utterly serendipitous.

A knock on the door concludes the moment and I gesture for it to be opened.  I do not worry about Barton trying to escape now.  He can’t afford to, not after revealing his hand.

“Professor Chang,” I acknowledge as the young academic takes one step over the threshold, spots Barton, stops, and scowls.  Ah, yes.  These two have already met, haven’t they?  Still, what sort of host would I be if I didn’t do the honors?  “Trowa Barton,” I state, gesturing between him and the expert on Asian prehistory and ancient written languages.  I’d recruited him a bit suddenly in another well-timed turn of events, only days after the late Lord Maxwell had impulsively decided to pick up the threads of his wife’s research and booked a pair of air tickets to Vientiane.  I finish the introductions: “Professor Wufei Chang.”

When they make no move to shake hands, I chuckle.  “Try not to glare any holes in the plane, gentlemen.  We’re all on the same team now.”

Chang gives the mercenary a look that has likely accompanied the discovery of dead insects in grubby window sills more than once.  “Where to this time?” he growls with characteristic truculence.  At times, it takes all my patience to not provide him with an attitude adjustment.

“London,” I say brightly, and then glance at Barton, “but I believe that’s little more than a refueling stop for our intrepid explorer.”

Chang’s lip curls into a sneer.  He hates it when I give our little Lord Maxwell pet names.  It amuses me, however: both Chang’s contempt and the pet names.

“You give him too much credit,” the professor mutters.  “If his father couldn’t decipher Professor Maxwell’s notes, what makes you think that boy can?”

“The message his mother left for him, for one thing,” I remind him.

“A bit of graffiti on a wall.”

Ah, Chang.  So bright and yet so quick to discard whatever doesn’t fit with his theories.  If he weren’t so brilliant, he’d be uselessly narrow-minded.  I shrug.  “It’s only fair to give him a chance, isn’t it?” I reply just to watch Chang sneer, pivot on his heel, and march back out of the room.  He’s undoubtedly heading for the car and he’ll undoubtedly be surly for the duration of the ride to the airport… and the flight to England.  At least I have someone new to play with.

I glance in Barton’s direction and notice the narrow-eyed, suspicious stare he sends after Chang.  Given how they’d initially met, I suppose a thin veneer of civility would be rather too much to expect.

It still amuses me to picture Chang, an accomplished martial artist in his own right, being caught with his metaphorical pants down in a moment of scholastic delight.  It had taken me days of prying before he’d confessed to the details.  “It’s not just you,” I tell Barton.  “True, holding a knife to his throat put him in a bit of a snit, but it’s the disturbance of a pristine archeological site that he holds against you.”

“Of all things,” Barton remarks dryly.

I laugh.  I could almost like Maxwell’s mercenary.  It’s a shame he’ll probably end up dead before this is all over.  Oh well.  Such is the price of progress.

Barton and Chang do not brawl on the plane.  More’s the pity.  While Chang pores over his notes and sketches and other scholastic bits which might prove to be useful in the very near future, Barton stares moodily out the window.  When the cabin attendant offers him a hot towel, he ignores her.  Well, I suppose he has a certain image to maintain.

I select a rose-scented linen.  “How have you been finding New York?”

He pretends he hadn’t heard the harmless inquiry, which amuses me.  “Were you this reluctant with Maxwell?”

I can’t see his gaze shift in my direction from this angle or through that expression-concealing hair style of his, but I sense it.  Barton’s silence is a beacon to the precocious.  I suppose that’s why I’m contemplating him instead of the projections report on the upcoming business quarter.

I observe, “An interesting strategy.  How long did it take before he fell for it?”

Barton’s silence is exquisite.  It is the calm before the storm.  Were I a much younger man, still open to experimentation and uncaring of the disadvantages inherent in having a partner of the same sex, I might have pursued Trowa Barton simply for the gratification of attaining him, of opening him up and examining his contents.  Of course, little can be gained in the long term.  I wonder when Maxwell will figure this out: as long as he is with Barton, there will be no heirs, no public recognition of their relationship, no alliances with other powerful families.  Homosexuality is all well and good for the common people, but those of us with legacies to manage cannot afford it no matter how tempted we may be.  In the age of eternally preserved information, any evidence of such a relationship is a ticking time bomb, a scandal waiting to happen.

I examine what I can see of Trowa Barton.  It is clear that he has been nutritiously fed and well-trained throughout his life.  His is a fighter’s physique.  Fit and healthy.  No young man approaching adulthood would be capable of _not_ admiring him in some fashion.  Combining all that with his aura of mystique and Dominic Maxwell never had a chance of resisting him.

I wonder how aware Trowa Barton is of his own appeal and conclude that he is most likely completely oblivious.  Were he not, he would have taken pains to veil his past and conduct his operations more subtly, casting a wider net.  In the coming years, this young man might have become delightfully proficient at manipulation.  But the world will likely never know.

Barton does not speak during the flight despite my attempts at conversation and, eventually, I turn my attention to my work.  When the plane lands in London to refuel, I’m told that Maxwell’s jet has gone onward to Cairo.

How interesting.

I instruct the pilot to file an identical flight plan.

“Who does our Lord Maxwell know in Cairo?” I ask Barton.

“He used to know a professor there.  Zechs Merquise.”

I reexamine Barton, intrigued by his sudden show of cooperation.  I’d already known about Merquise, of course, but I’d wondered what Barton would volunteer.  “Are there any other associations you’re aware of between Lord Maxwell and this general location?”

Barton gives me a long, level look.  In silence, he removes his cell phone from his jacket pocket.  I watch as he types out something on the screen.  After a moment, he turns the phone’s display toward me and shows me a list of Google results for “Maxwell” and “Egypt.”  Unsurprisingly, there’s a story about a dig site which the late Lord Maxwell had funded some three years ago.

Taking note of the date, I lean back in my seat and speculate.  “Three years ago, hm?  That’s approximately how long the two of you have been… acquainted.”

He shrugs one shoulder.  “That was where we met.”

“Did you cross paths while tomb raiding?” I tease.

“I was assigned to site security,” he says but, of course, I’d already known that.  I’d had my people look up this young man’s past months ago.  Trowa Barton of the Barton Troupe out of South Africa, a band of mercenaries specializing in land and asset security.  And, recently, they’d just won a potentially long term contract protecting the residents and living quarters of the Lagos branch of Alliance Systems, Inc.  Which just so happens to be a subsidiary of Khushrenada Research and Development.  One could almost believe it a coincidence, but of course it is nothing of the sort.  Oh yes, this game had been set in motion well before Victor Maxwell and his son had set foot on that flight to Laos.  That is how a true master casts his net and now I’ve only to reel in the spoils.

My off-hand remark to Barton about tomb raiding becomes ironically pertinent several hours later as I’m greeting my old friend, Zechs Merquise.  He doesn’t look particularly happy to see me, but of course he wouldn’t.  Merquise is no fool and the fact that his close friend and research fellow from his graduate days – Lady Helen Maxwell – had died after severing ties with me makes him cautious and borderline hostile.  He wants nothing to do with me or my money.  Never mind that I could fund every dig he cares to dabble in for the rest of his life.  Philanthropy really is the best investment one can make in the future.  Merquise has never seen it that way, however.  Not like Helen once had.

When the man turns his attention to Barton, I watch the byplay with interest.

“Trowa Barton, it’s been a long time.”  They shake hands.  Barton appears completely indifferent despite the professor’s welcome.

“Professor Merquise.”

He studies the young mercenary’s unreadable expression with narrowed eyes, but to his credit, Merquise doesn’t voice his suspicion that Barton is not accompanying my entourage because he enjoys the scented towels in “Khushrenada class.”

“Have you seen Duo?” Barton asks.  Had I posed the question, Professor Merquise undoubtedly would have categorically denied it and then promptly asked me to leave the premises, but he answers the mercenary after only the briefest pause.

“Yes.  He stopped by this morning.”

“Do you know where he is now?” Barton presses quietly, concern threading through his tone like steel cables.

Merquise reaches out and grips the young man’s shoulder.  Ah, so he finally understands why Barton is here.  Not that it matters.  There’s nothing either man can do about it.  The professor says, “I made sure he was well-prepared before he started out for the site.”

“The site?”

“The one he and his father visited a few years ago.  The one you guarded.”

“Do you have a recent map of the tombs?” Barton requests.

Merquise glances in my direction.  I’m tempted to tell him I’m merely assisting my friend, Trowa, in locating his wayward friend, but no one in this room would believe it.  Or see the humor in it.  Pity.

The professor’s eyes narrow, but he nods.  “Of course.”

When Barton follows him into an attached library just off of the professor’s cluttered office, Chang and I trail after.  Merquise rummages through a few files, shuffles around stacks of papers, and with each passing moment his frown deepens.

“Professor,” Barton prompts him after nearly five minutes of increasingly tense silence.

Merquise admits, “They’re not here.  Duo must have taken all the maps with him when he left this morning.”

I smirk.  Of course he’d made off with them.  He’d known I was on his trail and that I’d end up here, in Professor Zechs Merquise’s office.  Maxwell cannot afford to make my pursuit of him any easier.

“Do you have any digital copies?” Chang interjects and the professor doesn’t answer until prompted by a look from Barton.

“No.  They were slated to be rendered by the graphic design department next month.”

“Well, that’s that,” I offer and, turning to Barton, say, “we shall have to rely on your knowledge of the area.”  With a glance at Merquise, I add, “Unless the professor has a research fellow he can part with for the day?  Say, Miss Noin…?”

Merquise’s jaw clenches.  “I’m afraid my team and I are indisposed.”

Interestingly enough, Barton steps between us.  “My memory of it may not be as perfect as the maps, but I am familiar with the area.  As you say.”

Although he does not see it, the professor tenses in the wake of Barton’s novice attempt at handling me.  I’m more amused by Barton’s display of loyalty and I wonder what favor a university professor could have once done a young mercenary to warrant it.  I save my curiosity for another time.

I nod for Chang to head back out to the car.  I thank Merquise for his time and, as we leave, I hear the man say in a quiet and urgent tone, “Trowa, Khushrenada is—”

“I know.  If you see Duo, tell him…”

When only silence follows, I glance back in time to see Barton tucking something – perhaps a pendant – back inside his shirt.  Whatever he’d shown the professor has produced a small, heartfelt smile. 

Merquise nods.  “I will tell him.”

I consider pressing Barton for the content of this message, but no.  It works in my favor if Barton thinks I am indifferent.

My security staff consults with Barton and procures supplies for the overland journey we’ll be making.  I consider enjoying the comforts of the lounge at Cairo’s Ritz Carlton while I wait, but even I’m not that confident that Barton won’t attempt to slip his leash before I’m ready for him to do so.  Besides, a lackadaisical approach will not give Barton confidence that I will hold up my end of our bargain.  I resign myself to suffering the role of Mister Money Bags, standing by while Barton negotiates the rental of two Jeeps using a shorthand that is not English but not Egyptian, either.  Therefore, it must be a mercenary code.

When the vehicles have been loaded up with supplies – everything from water to gasoline to winches and cables to an emergency shortwave radio – I gesture for the map and Barton points mutely to our destination.  The coordinates are entered into our GPS unit and we are underway.  I’m rather impressed with the former mercenary’s efficiency and tell him so.  He makes no comment, gives no indication that he’d heard the praise over the hot, gritty wind blowing in our faces.

I smile.  What a shame that our paths have crossed so late into the game.  I would have liked to have played with him a bit longer.  Alas, there is no denying the fact that Barton would rather die than admit his pursuit of Maxwell is pointless.  Utterly pointless.  I own both of them, they simply haven’t yet bothered to read the fine print.  I very much look forward to seeing the looks on their faces when they do.  What a marvelous, unanticipated bonus of this entire endeavor.  Yes, things are coming together quite nicely.

I glance over my shoulder toward the cargo area of the vehicle and locate the long, metal case I’d insisted be brought from the plane.  I might be following Maxwell into his territory, but I’ve got all the bait.

“I don’t suppose you’re much of a fisherman, Mr. Barton,” I idly inquire.

He ignores me.

I chuckle softly and drum my fingertips on the armrest.  He can’t yet appreciate the joke, but before too long I’m sure he will.


	17. The Quest, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme music: "Plane" by Jason Mraz
> 
> Duo POV

Once upon a time, a British lord and his younger son used to play this dorky word association game.  You can probably guess who the lord was.  Ditto for the son.  The game itself went something like this: somehow, we’d get stuck on a word and end up listing all the phrases that use it.  I forget exactly how it started, but there was this one time we were bantering back and forth in the car as we were driving.

“The head honcho is heading out,” I think I said.

“The head honcho is heading out into the great unknown and he mustn’t lose his head,” my dad answered… or something similar.

“The head honcho will use his head as he meets the obstacles in his path head on!”

My dad had paused and, very somberly, said, “Exactly, Dominic.  Exactly.”

I remember he’d looked very satisfied, as if I’d just absorbed a lesson he’d been trying to teach me for ages.  At the time, I’d probably just rolled my eyes and started mumbling about heading off course or something.  But now, years later, I think I finally understood what he’d been saying.  It’d certainly come in handy at school on Monday.  As my dad had long-ago advised, I hadn’t lost my head when everyone had seemed determined to humiliate me for slow-dancing with a guy at prom.

“We always knew you were gay, Maxwell.”

“Well…” I’d drawled, “if you waited until now to ask me out, I’m sorry to say that the ship has sailed, buddy.”

“Hey, Maxwell.  Who bottoms?”

I’d smirked.  “Why d’ya wanna know?  Lookin’ to make a deposit in the Spank Bank, are we?”

“Taking it up the ass tonight?”

I’d rolled my eyes.  “I dunno – _are_ you?  You might wanna consult your schedule if you can’t remember your own plans, dude.”

So, yeah.  They’d swung their punches but I’d rolled with them, coming up smiling.  More often than not, they’d laughed with me.  Not that I was interested in winning people over but it seemed like the path of least resistance in the long run.  What I did _not_ do was act like it had all been some kind of joke or misunderstanding or mistake.  It wasn’t any of those things and neither was what we had.

What we had was real and Treize Khushrenada was gonna _pay_ for trying to fuck with it.  It was time for me to step up and handle that sonuvabitch.  I was the head honcho now and it was time to meet my problems head on and, believe it or not, I really was using my head.

The first step involved getting my ass to the airport.

I climbed out of the taxi after tipping the cabbie for being on time picking me up from the school parking lot, waiting patiently in my building’s garage as I’d made the bed for the first time in my entire freakin’ life so my note would be found, and then getting me to the airport without hitting any major traffic jams.  Basically, he’d totally nailed the customer service trifecta.  Plus, he was a nice guy.  From Sudan, here with his mom and twin sons.  A three-hundred-dollar tip would probably get his boys new spike shoes for their soccer practice.  It sounded like they were damn talented.  It was the least I could do.

The cabbie waved goodbye to me, all smiles, and I waved back.  So what if he remembered me.  I wasn’t trying to be sneaky.  I just hoped no one bugged him or his family about me.  A call to his boss to check the route I’d taken would probably be the extent of it if my flight plan wasn’t obvious enough.  Still, I crossed my fingers for him.

I hitched my streetmarket-bought backpack higher up onto my shoulder and pointed myself in the direction of the tarmac, feeling a weight settling into my bones.  There was no turning back now.  This was the beginning of the end for Treize Khushrenada.  He was gonna get what was comin’ to him or I wasn’t a Maxwell.

With each footstep on the pavement, a single word echoed again and again in my wake: _Doom… doom… doom!_   My giggles bounced back to me, making me laugh even harder until the roaring of aircraft engines drowned out even my alternating guffaws and hiccups.  I was still chortling as I jogged up the steps of the plane and ducked into the cabin where my pilot and unwitting co-conspirator was waiting.

“Hey, Duo.  Where’s your looker?”

It was a simple question.  Three words, but they crashed into me so hard I wanted to spin around and cave Howard’s skull in.  My humor didn’t just fade out – oh no, it was fuckin’ _brainwashed_ by a shit ton of memories I could not let myself think about right now.  I tried to remember how to smile, but in the end I had to turn away from Howard’s piercing stare to save my face the strain.  I leaned down on the pretense of taking a peek at our competition – hah, as if taking off was some kind of prize and all these planes were gonna be duking it out.  The thought pulled my lips back from my teeth and I caught the faint hint of a wide smile in my reflection in the window.

“Hey, Howie,” I greeted and I almost fooled myself with my perky tone.

I straightened up and faced off with him as Howard angled his chin down.  “I asked you a question, kid.”

I couldn’t see his eyes through the dark shades he was wearing, but I was pretty sure he had lasers instead of eyeballs.  Just like the Terminator.

The urge to smash those damned shades into his face tickled my knuckles and tightened my smile.  I forced myself to take a slow, carefully measured breath.  _Relax.  You can do this._ I could.  I was.  This was happening and I had to save my energy for the real fight that was waiting for me just over the horizon.  Literally.

I stowed my carry-on in the overhead compartment and glanced at my watch.  “Uh, right about now, I’d say he’s studying up for his GED.”

“He ain’t here.”

“Nope,” I agreed.

“It’s an eight-hour flight.  He could do his studyin’ onboard.”

“Drop it, Howard.  He’s not getting involved in this.  End of story.”

“You told me he’d be here.”

People really did get more stubborn with age.  I clung to my cool with each and every one of my fingernails.  Toenails, too.  “I told you I was bringing backup.”

“Uh-huh.  So, where is it?”

I plopped down in my seat and buckled in.  “When’s takeoff?”

“Thirty minutes,” he answered with a long-suffering sigh.  He locked down the passenger door and gave me another long look.  “When he kicks your ass for this, Duo—”

“You’ll be the one in the pink tutu waving the sparkly pompoms from the sidelines.  Yeah yeah, I got it.”

With a disgusted grunt, he headed for the cockpit and left me in peace.  I dug out my cell phone; this was my last chance to place a quick call before takeoff.

“Hello?”

I rolled my eyes.  “How come you answer with a question, man?  You can totally see my name on your caller ID.”

He chuckled.  “Habit, I suppose.”

“So…” I drawled, swiveling my ankles and knocking my feet together in a spasm of anxious energy that had nothing to do with how much caffeine was in my system.  “Are we good to go?”

“Only just.  He wasn’t hard to track down, but took quite a bit of convincing.”

“Well, I warned ya he’d be a tough nut to crack.”

“I had to tell him about the artifact.”

“I figured you would.”

“Do you really think it’s made of an unknown substance?”

I grinned at his little geek-gasm.  “Do you know of anything that’s supposed to be indestructible?”

“Working on it.”

I didn’t doubt that he was.  “So Yuy’s on board.”

“Yes, and you owe me one.”

I wheezed out a laugh.  Tilting my head against the porthole, I declared, “Who are you trying to kid, Winner?  By the time all’s said and done, I’ll owe you my first born.”

“In that case, I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to pay up.”

My grin faltered.  “Yeah,” I choked out.  My strangled tone bounced off the thick airplane glass and hit me right between the eyes.

“Duo.  He’ll understand.”

_He._

I knew exactly who Quatre was talking about, but I couldn’t let myself think his name.  Not yet.  I had to time it so those five letters came together at just the right moment to call forth the Reaper, summoning him from the depths of my endless, black _rage_.  This was not the time or the place.  Right now, I had to focus on setting everything up for my major play.  I’d never put together a long con before, but that’s what this was.  A marathon of misdirection and manipulation.

Shit.  Could I really pull this off?

A voice as cold as death hissed softly in reply, _"You have to."_

“Yeah,” I breathed, closing my eyes and imagining the cold steel of the Reaper’s scythe resting within my chest, curving around my heart, holding me to my course, honing my anger and intent.  The days of impulsively smashed coffee cups and mindless, ineffectual threats in the face of old scars were long gone.  Khushrenada had made sure of that.

“Duo?  Are you there?  Hello?”

I startled and stammered something about losing the connection, then I chirped, “See ya tomorrow, buddy!” and hung up before Quatre could toss two more cents into the conversation.  I didn’t need his reassurances or advice or fuckin’ fortunetelling.  Didn’t want any of it.  The one thing I did want, I was days away from getting.  You could probably even guess what that might be.

Yup.  Khushrenada’s _head_ on a plate.

The plane engines roared to life and I shut off my phone.  The tarmac blurred by.  My stomach dipped as the plane went airborne.  The landing gear whirred its way back into the underbelly of the craft.  I settled back in my seat and stared out at the sky.  It was always clear weather above the clouds.  Sunny.  You could even see those dumbass silver linings they sing about in sappy love songs.  My fingers followed the shimmer of light along the detailing of my phone and I thought of its twin back in New York.  Six hours from now, it would be pressed to the ear of a green-eyed guy, his frown deepening with each unanswered ring.

It wasn’t too late to call this off, to flick on the comm. and tell Howard to turn around and go back.  I’d make it in time for my usual ride with no one the wiser.  And then do what?  Wave to Khushrenada’s goons as they trailed two cars behind?  Shadowing me for the rest of my life?

No.

I was doing this.  I was doing what I’d been too young to do for my mom and Solo, what I’d been too clueless and naïve to do for my dad.  I was doing what needed to be done.  Howard wouldn’t be the last person to disagree with me on that, but he – and countless others – hadn’t seen what I had.

I thought of my dad’s pinned and broken body.  His bloodied and bandaged fingers. 

I thought of Khushrenada’s new hobby: playing with a man’s freedom and future like a cat toys with a string.

My fault.  All of it.  Why had I left my dad on the steps while I’d gone back?  Why had I freakin’ dropped that damn knife in the ruins?  How completely and totally _stupid._ I’d done this.  Me.  And it was up to me to fix it once and for all.

When we landed in London, I turned on my phone but didn’t return any of the calls I’d missed.  Quatre’s number wasn’t listed and, frankly, he was the only one I had any reason to talk to.

“Put a flight plan together for Cairo,” I told Howard on my way down the steps.

“What?”

“Next stop.  Cairo.  Make it happen.”

He scowled.  I held out my hand, “Car keys.  Gotta run an errand.”

Howard grabbed my arm.  “Duo, you gotta knock this shit off.”

We both knew I wouldn’t fire him, and even if I did, he wouldn’t let me take off without him.  So I gave him a wide grin as I stealthily unhooked the keys from his belt loop.  “Be back in a few.  Four hours tops.”

I twisted out of his grasp and was skipping out the door of the hangar before he thought to pat himself down and check the status of his keys.  “Thanks for the lend, Howie!” I crowed, showily twirling the keychain around my finger.  I shut the door behind me before he could start shouting.

I made it out to the house in just over an hour and a half – an undoubtedly new record – and then I stared at the damn intercomm. for no less than five solid minutes, remembering a rainy December evening, a short in the wiring, Howard schlepping his skinny ass over here to get a look at us.

_Us._

I shoved my way into the house, gladly mashing my shoulder against the door when it stuck in the frame.  I stumbled into the foyer and, a dozen steps later, my feet glued themselves to the floor across from the kitchen doorway and I remembered: ramen noodles, cupboards, that damned free-standing butcher’s block in the middle of the room.  I squeezed my eyes shut and twisted my face away.  Eight steps later, an open doorway and a familiar sofa sent a stabbing pain into my chest.  Fuck, but it’d only been one afternoon weeks ago and yet it took everything I had to shove the memory outta my head.

I fisted my left hand, feeling the glass ring dig into my skin, and told myself I was angry.  I was furious with Khushrenada and that was why my eyes were stinging and my vision was blurry.

Pausing at the door to my mom’s office, I pulled my shirt sleeve over my fist and scrubbed at my face.  One deep breath.  Two.  I pushed open the door.

“OK, mom,” I told the dusty room.  “Let’s do this.”

The safe yielded to me thanks to the combination she’d left for me inside the plastic casing of Solo’s iPod.  The same forensics reports and research notes stared back at me.  I scooped everything out and into my backpack.  There was no point in closing an empty safe, so I just headed for the stairs.  I plopped down in front of the brick hearth and got a fire going.  Then I started feeding it page after page covered in my mom’s handwriting.

I had to stop a couple of times and scrub at my face some more, but I got it done.  Everything my mom had ever discovered about that fucking gateway was destroyed.  The only copy that remained was what was in my head.  It was better this way.  If _I_ was the research, then Khushrenada would need me.  He’d need me alive and cooperating.  He probably wouldn’t believe anything I said until I’d been tortured, though.  Of course, he’d have to catch me first.

The flames popped, flickered, and dimmed.  I glanced down at my brother’s iPod, turning it over and over in my hand.  This should go, too.  At least one other person besides Yuy and me knew about it.  He’d seen it last Easter, propped his hip against the side of my mom’s desk when he’d asked about it, and gripped my hand tightly when I’d evaded him.  I’d kept the truth from him, telling him only enough to make him wary.  Thanks to the forensics report, he knew what Khushrenada was capable of.  Thanks to the iPod, he knew that my mom was still trying to look out for me. 

I flipped it over my fingers, pressed the play button and watched as a song’s title showed up on the screen.  I should totally torch this, but did I have to?  Did I really have to?  What were the odds that Khushy would figure out that my mom had been trying to tell me something?  How likely was it that he’d decode the message before I did?  Slim.  Slim enough that I finally just stuffed the thing in my jacket pocket.

As the fire slowly starved to death, I leaned back on my hands and gazed up at Mildred, the wooden alligator skeleton.  I thought of the guest room down the hall with its curtain-less windows and big bed.  I recalled the blanket-fort in my closet.  A box of comics.  An afternoon spent hiding from the universe.

With a huff, I got up and grabbed the poker, separating the coals and stamping out the dying flame.  Then I went downstairs, reset the alarm, threw my backpack in the car, and got behind the wheel.  But I didn’t head back to the airport.  Not yet.  I idled down the narrow, country lane and stopped at the entrance to a small cemetery.  I stared out at the headstones through the windshield and recurled my fingers around the steering wheel, memorizing the feel of it against my hands.  I couldn’t afford to forget.  There was no going back at this point, only forward.

I climbed out of the car, leaving the engine running and door hanging open, and approached the three newest grave markers.  I wondered if mine would be here, too, someday.

“I shoulda come and talked to you guys sooner,” I told my dad, my mom, and my brother.  “I guess I was still hoping this was all a bad dream.  That if I just waited long enough, I’d wake up.”  But I knew I couldn’t think like that anymore.  I couldn’t keep hoping for the clock to reverse and all the pain and tragedy to be erased.  To be honest, the thought of that actually happening scared the crap outta me.  If I had the last ten years to live all over again with my entire family, would I have gone to Egypt when I did?  What if I hadn’t?  I couldn’t imagine it.  I didn’t want to.  There were dozens of things I _should_ have done differently in my life.  Things that should never have happened, but they had happened and I had so much to live for now.  I had something – I had _someone_ who meant more to me than all my loses combined.  “I’m sorry, guys,” I told my family, “but I can’t hold on to you anymore.  I’ve gotta make a choice, an’ I choose him.”

_Him._

My hands found their way into my jacket pockets and I remembered a biting chill.  I remembered our fingers interlacing and sharing tight quarters and warmth in the pocket of an old trench coat.  My hand curled around the iPod; there was only one thing for me to hold on to now - a message from a woman who’d been marked for death.  Had she known?  Had she really thought Khushrenada would hesitate to kill the both of them - a mother and her child - if she’d kept Solo close?  Well, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

I pulled the music player from my pocket and glared at it.  “I still don’t know what you were trying to tell me,” I confessed to my mom’s headstone, “but I’m listening.”

I fitted the ear buds into place and pumped up the volume.  I listened and I heard three words: Japanese, Kremlin, China.  And I knew where I had to go next if my mission in Cairo failed.

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll do it, but you better know what you’re doing, mom.”  Turning to my brother’s grave marker, I grinned.  “And you, you pain in the ass, just wait until I work up enough gas for a big, fat, juicy fart.  You’ll be smellin’ me in the afterlife.”  Lastly, I faced my dad.  “I wasn’t ready for you to leave me in charge, but… I am in charge.  I get that.  An’ I’m not gonna let you down.”

It was that promise that kept my smile on and my chin up when I sauntered back up the airplane steps and faced Howard’s wrath.  He could yell himself hoarse and disapprove all he liked, but it wasn’t gonna change a damn thing.  It wasn’t gonna bring the dead back to life.  It wasn’t gonna keep the people I loved safe and that’s what later squashed the guilt I felt at dropping in on nice Professor Merquise, who welcomed me into his study at the U and chatted with me about the old site and my dad and mom before he offered to go get us both some coffee, and then came back to a ransacked office.

I was long gone by then, handing over the cash for the supplies of borderline legality that I’d need: one shortwave radio frequency jammer and a dozen sticks of plastic explosives complete with detonators.  Plus other incidentals.  Then it was time to drive out into the desert and set a trap for a megalomaniac.

It was late morning when my Jeep rolled to a halt at the old dig site.  I cut the chugging engine with fingers that had long since gone numb – not from the constant, dust-filled wind blasting me, but from my own callousness. 

“Here we are again,” I told the desert and its ghosts.  Then, I took a deep breath and said the name I hadn’t been ready to hear before now because I knew exactly what it would do to me, the power it would raise, the bloodlust it would stir.  “Trowa.”

Just two syllables.  Five letters – or four if spelled out in ancient Egyptian – and I was instantly infused by the Reaper’s righteous fury.  Trowa was my reason for all of this, for every breath I took and every torment I was about to unleash.  I dived into my rage, drank it down – guzzled it – and it filled me up until it wasn’t just _in_ my blood; it _was_ my blood.  Before this day was out, someone might be dead because of what I was about to do.  Once upon a time, that would have scared me shitless.  Now, it made me smile.

“The God of Death is coming for you Khushrenada,” I whispered gleefully to the desert.

The searing wind whipped across the dunes in answer.

I got to work.


	18. The Quest, Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trowa POV
> 
> Y'all can blame the delay in updating on both Real Life and the fact that my reviewers (all four of you) have so much love for this story that I had to go back and add in more Epic, stir counter clockwise, cover with Awesome and let rise to the occasion. Heh.

Duo was here.  I knew it even before the abandoned Land Rover came into view.  And just there beyond it, the old, gnarled tree was still keeping vigil over the sands.  Its crooked branches reached out to shelter the table and bench that had once sat at its base, bisected by its meager shadow.  The tree’s limbs were poised as if caught in eternal remembrance of a braid snaking downward, bridging the distance between boys from different worlds.  Chopin tethering a hollow heart to a pair of inquisitive dark eyes.

Duo was here and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t going to strangle him for the stunt he’d pulled in New York.  My hands tightened in my lap, fingers curling as if his throat were in my grasp, but it wasn’t his pain I wanted.  I wanted an explanation.  I wanted to know _why._

I wanted to know why he’d brought us back to this desert, back to the place where I’d realized I didn’t want to be a merc for the rest of my life, back to the place where my empty heart had been filled to bursting by a skinny, long-haired oke with more gees than sense.  It was like he was gunning to erase everything that’d happened over the last three plus years.  It was like he was erasing _us._

I hissed out a breath through gritted teeth and scanned the wasteland for any sign of him.  Aside from the lone 4x4 and my own memories, there was nothing to see.

“Stop here,” I told the driver, gesturing for him to angle the Land Rover so as to block Duo’s exit.  The second vehicle mirrored ours and its occupants swung themselves out onto the sand, awaiting instructions.  I could feel Khushrenada’s gaze on me as I gave swift, succinct orders for reconnoitering the site.

“There are six tombs in total,” I explained over the hiss of dust being scattered by the wind.  “One grouping of three are connected.  The others are separate.”  I gestured for some paper and a pen so I could sketch out the subterranean tunnels and chambers as best I remembered.

“Thus, thus, and—” I hid a grimace as I drew the tomb Duo had shown me on his last night here. “—thus.  I advise—”  This comment I directed toward Khushrenada who was gazing at the crudely drawn map with interest.  I was mimicking the captain as best I could, recalling how he’d dealt with previous employers.  It suddenly occurred to me that, if not for Duo, this would be my role one day and the men standing behind me would be the next generation of Barton mercs.

I had to clear my throat before I could continue.  “I advise we leave one team outside to stand watch.  The second will reconnoiter the tombs together.  Eliminate the smaller ones first.  If it becomes necessary to enter the largest—”  I gestured to the collection of connected tombs and remembered the time I’d toured them with Duo.  I remembered the symbols he’d effortlessly translated and the fire he’d awakened within me.  My fingers curled into a fist at the memory of my sudden passion to know what he’d known, to learn what he’d learned, to become more than what I was, to look beyond the life I’d always assumed I would lead.

“Once we’re through the tunnel and enter the main chamber, we’ll split up into pairs.  One pair for each tomb.”  I didn’t even glance Khushrenada’s way as I chose the guards who would remain topside and then partnered the remaining men up.  “You with Chang.  You with Khushrenanda.  And you with me.  Grab a torch, a canteen of water, and a set of ties.  The aim is to capture – not kill.  Report any sign of human activity on channel two,” I concluded, indicating the handheld radios.

Khushrenada shifted and drawled lazily, “Am I to be one of your soldiers, Mr. Barton?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be more prudent for me to wait beside the vehicles?”

“It would,” I readily confessed.  “But you entered the ruins in Laos, didn’t you.  You’re not the sort of man to trust others – no matter how qualified they may be – with your investments.  Duo’s presence here indicates the importance of this site.”  I turned my entire body to face him, a technique the captain often employed just before issuing a solid conclusion.  “If I’d told you to wait here, you would be insisting on accompanying us.  I’m saving you the trouble.”

All the men waited a moment for Khushrenada to object.  Instead, the man chuckled.  “Well-anticipated, Mr. Barton.”

I ignored the compliment.  “And if you are going below ground, you will follow my orders.  Therefore, yes, you are one of my soldiers.  Is that clear?”

His eyes twinkled with mirth.  “Very.”

I passed him a radio.  He took it.  When no other comments were forthcoming, we moved out.  My hands twitched toward the knives I wasn’t wearing.  Khushrenada’s bodyguards had confiscated each of them before they’d let me into his office in New York.  Khushrenada caught the restless movements of my hands as they reached for weapons I no longer had.

Ignoring the bliksem toppie’s amused expression and Chang’s glower, I led the way to the last place I wanted to go.  In my memory, the sail was still stretched out over the shallow steps that had been carved into the damp, hard-packed sand.  In my memory, it was still night and in the glow of a single torch Duo reached for me as I pressed my hands – one cradling the clay pendant he’d given me – against his pale cheeks.  But there was no sail, no torch-lit darkness, no mere pendant between Duo and me.  In this wind-worn dugout, I’d glimpsed my future.  Now all I saw was dust.

Swallowing thickly, I scowled at the hollow in the earth, noting the presence of freshly tilled sand around the recently cleared doorway.  Had he really come this way?  Or was this a decoy?  I hesitated, waiting for the others to assemble around the entrance, and wondered.

_Duo, what are you scheming?_

As far as I knew, there was only one way in and out of this tomb.  If Duo was in here, he’d be trapped.  Did he _want_ to get caught?

“Befok,” I muttered, then clicked on the radio to contact the team by the vehicles.  “Report any sign of movement.  We’re heading down.  Over.”

“Copy that.  Over.”

Right.  There was nothing left for it now but to move on.  I ducked down into the gloom.

The tunnel had never been widened much beyond what it had been the night Duo had shown it to me.  I had to stoop most of the way and at times crawl on hands and knees.  The torch light bobbed mindlessly ahead into the undefined darkness and my shoulders scraped the walls.  It was a relief to enter the antechamber, but that was short-lived.  The room was empty now.  All of the relics Duo had shared with me were long gone.  No doubt installed in an exhibit or secreted away in museum archives.  There was nothing here now except for the faded writing and drawings on the walls.  There was no Duo and no answers.  I walked as silently as I could, but my footsteps echoed from one chamber to the next.  Like heartbeats.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chang shadowing my progress, his attention focused on the walls.  Khushrenada coughed.  I almost smiled at the thought of a toppie like him wiggling through that tunnel.

The burial chamber that had been opened and emptied years ago.  I’d gotten to see it once after all the artifacts had been sketched and marked for cataloguing.  Now the bare corners seemed to throb, aching for the treasures these walls had spent centuries protecting.

I surveyed both rooms from top to bottom, checking in with the team by the Land Rovers every five minutes, but Duo never made contact.  No messages, no sightings.  Nothing.

I had to force myself to duck down into the tunnel and leave.  I had to force myself not to stare at the hint of a ledge in the sand just outside.  I had to grit my teeth and clamp my lips together to keep them from tingling in memory.  The pendant beneath my shirt felt like it was burning into the skin of my chest.  We reconnoitered the second individual tomb, and then the third until only the largest grouping remained.  Duo had to be in here.  I still didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish and it made me want to donner the walls until I broke both my hands.

Lifting the radio, I checked in with the secondary team.  “Report.  Over.”

“No sign of movement or Maxwell.  Over.”

“We’re moving into the final target.  Over.”  Before they could acknowledge that, Khushrenada pressed the “talk” button on his radio and drawled, “Please join us, gentlemen.”

I tensed.  My eyes narrowed.

Chang was the one who objected, “I don’t advise leaving the vehicles unsupervised.”

“It’s a risk,” Khushrenada allowed, “but we’ve eliminated all other hiding places.”  To demonstrate, he turned around in a slow circle, surveying the utterly flat, desolate, and featureless landscape.  With the exception of the single tree near the Land Rovers, there was nowhere Duo could be hiding.  He then quizzed me, “And how many tombs did you say there were?”

“Three.”

“Hm, yes.  We’ll have to split up, you said.  In pairs.  I find that I’m not partial to those odds.”

I shrugged, though I didn’t much like the odds Duo and I would now be facing.  How was I going to extract him from this and get us both as far away from Khushrenada as possible?  As we  approached the third and final entrance, I gritted my teeth in frustration.  This one had been recently cleared as well.  What for?  Had Duo been searching for something or had he been hoping to divide Khushrenada’s people?  Was this a clever trap or were we walking into a direct confrontation?  The latter couldn’t be the case.  Duo didn’t honestly believe he could take down a team of professional soldiers, did he?  Bugger and fuck, he probably did.

“Chang and you five,” I said, pointing to the men just arrived from their post by the vehicles, “take this route.  There’s a second entrance.  We’ll take that.”  Again, Khushrenada didn’t argue.  Which told me one thing: he trusted Chang more than he did me.

The second entrance was about 500 meters northwest, but the closer I got to the area, the deeper my scowl became.  There was no second entrance, only endless, dry and drifting sand.  Without the exact coordinates, a GPS unit, and a few hours of digging, there was no way we’d be able to find it.

“The entrance, Mr. Barton?” Khushrenada prompted as I glared at the ground.

“Somewhere beneath our feet.”

“Hm.  I suppose Lord Maxwell won’t be using it, then.”

I didn’t answer.  I turned on my heel and stomped back the way we’d come, and then radioed Chang’s team that we were entering the same way they had.  This darkness held far too many memories as well.  I trailed my fingers over the Egyptian characters Duo had translated for me and the friction burned my skin.

“Any sign of him?” Khushrenada demanded of Chang, who gestured with his torch to the southern-most tomb.

The space between my shoulder blades itched with foreboding as the entire team entered the first chamber.  A dozen men in an enclosed space.  I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t about to leave Khushrenada unsupervised.

“What does it say?”

Chang shook his head once.  “Jibberish.”

And that was precisely when all of our radios started squealing – echoing, bouncing, and amplifying in the enclosed space.  I grabbed for my radio, wincing at the horrid feedback that shrieked mindlessly through the speaker.  Realization hit in the instant I cut the volume: someone was jamming our radios.

“Get out!” I ordered, gesturing the everyone toward the main tunnel, but the command came too late.  With a muffled _pop!_ and _crash!_ from the entrance of the main tunnel, the air plumed with dust.  I moved to crouch against the nearest, stable wall, covered my nose and mouth with the fabric of my shirt, and held my breath, waiting for the cave-in to engulf us here in the main chambers as well.

It didn’t.

Long, heart-pounding moments later, several soft coughs pushed the silence back.

“Status!” I croaked and got ten “all clears”, a snarl from Chang, and a cheekily droll of “Just marvelous” from Khushrenada.  Everyone had survived the cave-in which meant we were all sharing the same oxygen.  Mindful of Duo’s warning from years ago –  _“There aren’t any air vents cut into the walls.”_  – I directed, “Two teams.  The first will assess the damage at the main entrance and begin digging our way out.  Use the handle of your torch if you have to.  One man into the tunnel at a time for five minutes.  Second team is with me.  We’ll locate the secondary exit and assess its condition.”

As men stood up and brushed themselves off, I scanned the chamber, looking for the message that Duo had supposedly left behind.  Was it nonsense as Chang had suggested?  Scrawled into the sand, I read, “Welcome to the tombs – let’s sand dance!”

Nonsense indeed.  Was he even taking this seriously?  My grip tightened around my torch until my entire hand began to ache.

“Mr. Barton,” Khushrenada prompted me.  “If you are ready to locate this other exit…”

Right.  I tucked my shirt collar up and over my nose to block most of the dust particles and squinted into the torchlight, coughing with every other step as I inspected the chambers one by one.  I’d never seen the other exit from within the tombs, but I’d seen plenty of archaeologists entering one and exiting the second so I knew it had to be here, but where the bugger and fuck was it?

Eventually, the others – perhaps realizing that our every breath was as borrowed as our time – spread out to feel along the walls.  The sand still hadn’t settled and visibility in the light of the torch was poor.  I patted my way along the stone and earthen walls until I came up against something of an entirely different texture.  A moment of investigation revealed it to be either a very narrow doorway or a wide, weathered wooden plank.

_What the…?_

Could Duo be hiding on the other side of this barrier?  Was he safe or had the other tunnel collapsed as well?  How could I even get to him?  There were no latches or handles of any kind.  I ran my hand over the surface twice more just to be sure – and gaining a dozen splinters in the process – but it was seamless.  Cursing softly in Africaans, I took a step back, braced myself for ramming the board with my shoulder, and then—

The wooden plank snapped up.  I dropped into a crouch and a caught a blur of movement in the beam of my torch in the instant before a dusty hand clamped over my mouth.  “Trowa, shhh.”

I barely heard him over the pounding of my own heart, but I lunged for him, grabbing for his shoulders and banging the torch against his chin in the process.  He pulled back sharply, but I was not about to let go of him now!

His fingers twisted in my jacket, yanking me toward him and into the darkness.  The board fell shut behind me, knocking against my heel with a soft thump, but Duo didn’t stop pulling me.  I tripped and crashed against the wall so hard that my momentum carried me over to hit the other.  I’d have matching bruises, but at least I knew where we were – this was the second tunnel.

“Duo,” I began as he stopped suddenly and I ploughed into him.

“Steady, babe.  Goin’ up.”

I lifted the torch just as he reached upward and suddenly I was blinded by light. All fall of sand and dust had me tucking my face into the crook of my elbow. Then I felt a tug on my wrist.

“C’mon, baby,” he urged and I stumbled up a set of wooden steps in his wake.  Reaching the surface, we both tumbled to our knees in the sand.  Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched a wide, wooden plank rise back up to ground level, revealing a series of wooden slats fixed horizontally along its top side.  Steps.  Steps which were even now being concealed once more by drifting sand.

“What?” I panted through my dust-coated mouth, completely at a loss.  “What is…?”

“Emergency exit,” Duo coughed out on a grin.  “Let’s go.”

He took off across the site, sprinting for the now unguarded Land Rovers.  I gave chase, reaching the vehicle of his choice a mere second after he’d belted himself down behind the wheel.  Growling, I pulled myself into the shotgun seat.

“Buckle up!” he sang, reversing noisily before grinding into first gear.

“Are you bosbefok?”

He bloody _giggled._   “Boss be fucked?  I’m guessin’ he is.  D’aww, poor Treize.  It’s gonna take ‘em a while to figure out where the escape hatch is.”

And Duo had known because he’d nicked all of the site maps.  With a shake of my head, I reconnoitered the Land Rover he’d chosen.  A pair of rucksacks sat behind my seat.  Mine and his.  The one I’d bought for him in Vientiane.  A set of crumpled papers peeked out of the front pocket: Merquise’s missing maps.  When I looked back up, he was grinning from ear to ear.  He was even driving one-handed while the other was draped possessively over the back of my seat.

My hand curled into a fist and I was only this close to using it.  “Congratulations.  We have a ten minute head start,” I snarled, thinking of the two Land Rovers we’d left behind like gifts.

He held up an index finger in protest.  “Check the very back.”

I did and found myself gaping at two haphazardly disconnected, stolen distributor caps.

“They’re gonna have to call for an extraction,” Duo announced with relish.  “That’s what you call it, right?”

“Ja,” I agreed woodenly, wondering when he’d found the time to accomplish all of this.  Not that it mattered.

“So that gives us, like, an hour head start.  Maybe two.”

I reckon it did.  I blinked into the hot, evening wind, coughing when I remembered the dust stuck to the inside of my throat and nose.  Duo wordlessly passed me a canteen.  My acceptance of it was automatic.  I drank.

He glanced my way, giving me a long look through the whipping tendrils of hair that had escaped his braid and I was reminded of another desert excursion.  “I didn’t expect you to be here,” he observed as I recapped the water.

Squeezing the metal container in my grasp, I hissed, “I didn’t expect you to be _gone_ when I went to pick you up.”

“Yeah,” he bit out.  “I know.”

“Why?”

He answered my demand by glancing down at my hands.  I had no idea why the sight of them strangling a canteen made him smile but that fokken grin of his was the last bloody straw.  “Nooit,” I gritted out, paining to klap the stroppy right out of him.  “You don’t get to do this, Duo.  You don’t get to chuck off to wherever – give me a skrik – dobbel with your life – it is not on!  We’re _maats,”_ I concluded just shy of shouting in his face.  “Partners!”

“Not in this, we’re not,” he quietly argued.

I stared at him, at the ring he was still wearing.  The ring he supposedly had no intention of taking off.  “What?” 

“There are things I know that I can’t tell you!  That makes us very _not_ partners, _not_ equals.”  He scowled at the dunes.  The rosy light of the setting sun mocked me.  There was nothing rosy about this.

I hurled the canteen into the foot well and turned away from him.  If I stared at him any longer, I was going to skop, skiet ‘n’ donner him.  Bugger and fuck.  Why did he make things so hang of difficult?  I scrubbed my hands over my face as if that might wake me up from this nightmare.

Duo shifted in his seat, but I didn’t turn to face him.  In a quiet, but firm tone, he insisted, “I had to do it, Trowa.”

“Is it?” I heard myself snap.  “Who was holding a gun to your head?”

“Is that what Treize’s Goddamn goons did?” he rasped.  “Did they hurt you?  I mean, did anyone…?”  His gaze flicked toward my hands again.  They were fisted once more but he still didn’t seem to give rocks that I might lash out at him.

“What are you on about?”

“What am I—!”  He bit off the incredulous squawk and huffed in aggravation.  “I was hoping they’d leave you alone!   As if blackmail isn’t enough for the slimy scum-sucker to have over our heads—”

“I went to _him!”_

This time the shocked silence was Duo’s.  “You…?  I beg your pardon?  Run that the hell by me again because it sounded like you just told me that _you_ went to our favorite buddy _Trieze fuckin’ Khushrenada_ —”

“I did!”

Duo banged both hands against the steering wheel.  “What the actual _fuck, Trowa?_ I damn well asked you to freakin’ _trust me_ so what the fuck are you _doing here?”_

“I asked you to marry me!”

“So you came all this way for an answer?”

“No.  I came all this way because we _are_ partners, Duo.”  I was not letting him get away with that kak he’d spouted earlier.

“Right.  And partners always team up with their fiancé’s worst enemy.”

The implication that Duo was tacitly accepting my proposal was not lost on me, but I would be over the fokken moon about it later.  When he was finally making sense and being reasonable.

I growled, “I’m doing what you taught me.”

_“What?”_

I quoted, “Keep your friends close…”

“Jesus Christ, Trowa.  You have no idea what you’re damn well doing!”

“I’m staying with you!”

“You should have stayed in New York.”

“That was never going to happen and you know it.”

“I—yeah, I guess it was too much for a guy to dream.  But, fuck, Tro.  _Khushrenada?”_

“How else was I going to round up enough tom to back you up?”  And I was pretty sure that Duo had already thought of this, had counted on my lack of funds to keep me caged like the zoo specimen Khushrenada clearly thought I was.

“Tom?  Don’t forget there’s also Dick and Harry,” Duo suggested with a tone of innocence.

One deep breath.  Another.  I was not going to wys him, not so long as words I knew I’d come to regret were burning holes in my tongue.  Five deep breaths later, I informed him, “You didn’t give me a choice.”

His face twisted into a snarl.  “I _know._   It was the only way.”

“The only way to do _what?”_  Drive me completely mal?

His mouth compressed into a very thin line.  “This is important, Tro.  Real important.”

“That’s why I deserve to know.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, surprising me.  “But I can’t tell you.”

I whipped a hand through my hair in aggravation, dislodging dust and common sense alike.  “Stop the befokken Land Rover,” I commanded.

He nodded in acknowledgement, but kept right on driving.  I didn’t ask him a second time.  I glared out at the desolate landscape until it was too dark to see, then I kept right on glaring.  Right up until the 4x4 rolled to a halt on a dusty landing strip.

I turned around at the sound of Duo unbuckling his seatbelt.  Behind him I could see a small jet.  The light in the cockpit was on and an old, balding man with dark shades was gesturing enthusiastically at us from within.  Howard.

“Trowa,” Duo began, “I will do whatever I have to in order to make sure you’re safe, even if you end up hating me for it.”

I was too furious to deny the possibility.

He looked me in the eye, his lips curling in so far he could have chewed on both.  When he spoke, his voice was low and earnest.  “Go with Howard.  Let him take you someplace safe.  I’ll wrap this up in two days.  Three, max.”

He wanted me to sit on my hands in one of his fokken pozzies and wait for him to come home?  How could he even ask that of me?  “I’m coming with you.”

“I can’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me.”  I struggled with the seatbelt, grunting when it didn’t give.  It didn’t even rattle.  “What—?”  The sound of a door slamming shut snapped my attention back around.  “Duo!  What did you fokken do to my seatbelt?”

With a wink, he pulled something from his demins pocket and tossed it up onto the front seat.  Bostik.  A quick-drying gel for metal parts.  And here I sat without even a utility knife to cut myself free.  Ignoring the fire racing across my bruised shoulders at the motion, I reached back for the seatbelt strap, but it held fast.  No doubt because Duo’s hand had been busy _gluing it down_ while he’d been draping his arm over the back of my bloody seat.  Next, I scrambled for the seat recliner, but I couldn’t reach it pinned as I was.

“Cut me loose!” I barked.

“No can do,” Duo sing-songed merrily, banging against the side of the Land Rover as he hefted a large, metal tool chest from the back.  I recognized it as one of the containers Khushrenada had ordered loaded onto the vehicles from his private jet.

Duo turned his back and the sight of him walking away from me was enough to rip my heart in two.  “Duo!”

He pivoted around once more and approached my side of the car, staying just out of range.  “I’m not gonna lie to you, but I am asking you leave,” he shocked me by saying.  He remembered that night before his father’s funeral when I’d confessed to the things I needed from him.  Just two things.  “Just give me a little time, Trowa.  And then, when this is all over, I will get down on my knees and beg you to forgive me.  I love you.  And I hate Khushrenada for making me do this.  Even if you can’t trust me anymore, can you believe that?”

I could.

He didn’t wait for me to respond.  Braid snaking out in his wake, he took off for the plane, rucksack bouncing against his back.  I watched him wave to Howard but dodge around the ladder and duck under the nose of the aircraft.  Where the hell was he going?  I tracked him for as long as I could see him, but then had to admit defeat.  I’d been yanking and pulling at the seatbelt so much that my hands were getting raw, but I didn’t stop.  Couldn’t.  I couldn’t let him take off like this and leave me behind _again._

It was Howard who finally cut me loose, sawing through the belt with a dull pocket knife.  “That little brat didn’t just leave you here, did he?”

He most certainly had, but in that moment, I was more concerned with the second small jet that was currently pulling out from behind the Maxwell aircraft and taxiing down the runway with its wingtip lights strobing into the darkness.  If I squinted I was sure I could see Duo in one of the window seats.  “Whose plane is that?”

Howard scratched his unshaven cheek.  “That’d be the Winner jet.”

“Winner.”  I was too choked up with fury to bother making it a question.

“I thought I told ya to keep an eye on him,” the old man muttered irritably, waving me toward the waiting plane.  I went because, frankly, Duo had been right.  I’d been a complete chop to go to Khushrenada in the first place.  At the top of the stairs, just before I ducked into the cabin, Howard laid a hand on my shoulder to stop me.  “What happened, Trowa?”

“The hell if I know.”

“Well, what’d he _say?”_

“That he wants to keep me safe,” I bit out.

“Ah, poor kid.  He’s lost everybody who ever loved him.  It’d kill him to lose you, too.”

Perhaps he had a point.

“Still, there ain’t no accountin’ for him thinkin’ he can take on a man like Treize Khushrenada all on his own.”

“He’s not on his own.”  Not if he was flying off with Quatre Bloody Raberba Fokken Winner.

“Eh?”  Howard followed my scowl up to the blinking lights in the night sky.  “Naw, don’t let that fancy jet fool yah.  Duo’s gonna be playing his cards so close to his chest they might as well be tattooed on.  Winner ain’t his backup.  Oughta be you out there, kid.”

“If I knew where he was headed, I would be.”

“Yeah?”

“Ja.”

He grinned.  “Well, it just so happens I have a pretty go idea of where he’s gonna end up before long.”

“Is it?” I countered, rounding on him.

The old man’s lips twisted downward even as he spoke.  “Someone had to fly his momma an’ brother out there all them years ago, didn’t they?  It just so happens you’re lookin’ at him.”


	19. The Quest, Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duo POV
> 
> Theme music: "Flawed Design" by Stabilo

I let out a low whistle as I got my first glimpse of Quatre’s digs from the backseat of a posh limo.  The light of a new day kissed the pristine granite walls creating a misting glow.  I’d bet you could see the freakin’ thing from earth orbit.  It wasn’t very inconspicuous, but I couldn’t complain about the security.

“Hey, hey, easy on the rucksack, man.”

The massive, bearded mountain of a man gave me a measuring look.

“It’s got sentimental value,” I admitted, crossing my arms and grabbing my elbows to keep from yanking it away from his pawing hands.  I’m pretty sure that would’ve gotten me uninvited from the Winner Palace real quick.

“Duo!”

I turned at Quatre’s shout of welcome and waved across the sparkling foyer with its artfully placed potted palm trees to where my host-with-the-most was leaning over the second story banister.

“You made it!”

“Yup.  All in one piece, too,” I quipped, keeping a corner of my eye on Mr. Mohammad-that-could-move-a-freakin’-mountain.  I knew that rucksack looked like hell – after everything it’d been through, it was a given – but at least the guy wasn’t tearing into it anymore as he catalogued my shorts and cargo pants.  He scowled at my Oscar the Grouch T-shit as if it had issued a challenge he was honor-bound to meet.  It was on the tip of my tongue to assure him that it wasn’t personal.  Oscar always looked like that.

“How’s Trowa?” Quatre unwittingly hassled me.

“Oh, uh, he’s taking care of some stuff.  Y’know.”

Quatre beamed even though he didn’t, in fact, know.  “I’m glad he’s all right.”

So was I.  He was probably perched on the balcony at the townhouse in Warsaw, whetstone in one hand and hunting knife in the other, relishing thoughts of my painful demise, but I’d have to learn to live with that.  Howard had better have followed my instructions this time or there’d be hell to pay.

I manfully ignored the fact that my things were still in the possession of Quatre’s goons and sauntered over to the pleasantly burbling, tiled fountain.  It was probably supposed to be an awe-inspiring centerpiece of Islamic art, but all it made me wonder was what the urinals in this place looked like.  “Did you start the party without me?”

Receiving an official “All clear, Master Quatre” from his chief of taking-names-and-knocking-heads-together, my most recent co-conspirator started down the spiraling steps at a pace that was damn perky for just past sunrise.  “Heero’s all set up.  We’re just waiting on the artifact.”

I reached over and patted the tool box I’d, er, borrowedfrom ol’ Khushy.  I didn’t try to remove it from the ginormous mitts of its handler, though.  “Well, then, lead the way,” I declared and, yeah, I had to admit it wasn’t all bad having someone carry your heavy shit for ya.  Given the travel itinerary I’d set for myself, I needed all the energy I could spare for swagger.

“Oh, but,” Quatre fretted with utmost poise, “are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat first?  Rashid makes the best pistachio puff pastry in the country.”

“It’s true,” one of the junior grunts volunteered.  “The boss won an award in Qatar’s number one cooking periodical.”

“Wow,” I said just as Q’s security chief glared at his underling for outing his baking prowess at the first available opportunity.  The grunt visibly quailed with a twitchy smile and hunched shoulders.  I cleared my throat.  “Uh… tempting, but let’s save it for the victory celebration, yeah?”

“Of course!  Here we are,” Quatre narrated, ushering our little caravan into a ground floor room.  “We’ve converted the second solarium into a lab since it has a kiln and independent ventilation system.”

“Riiiight.”  You never knew when whatever you were baking was gonna decide to start leaking poisonous fumes.  Hopefully this was not a problem that Mr. Extra Large Oven Mitts had much experience with.

“I told you – the kiln won’t be hot enough to destroy the key.  If it’s authentic,” a third voice contributed.

I grinned toward the source of that flat tone.  “Hey, Yuy.  Good to see you again, buddy.  How’s the OJ team?”

“Did you bring the artifact?”

“Uh, that’s what we’re here to find out,” I drawled, wondering what he had against small talk.  Maybe there was a hot date waiting for him back in Japan.

“Hm,” he grunted, gesturing shortly for the porter carrying the toolbox to set it down and back the hell off of the goods inside.  I lounged against the counter and let him run the show.  Having seen the thing already, I wasn’t in any hurry to bump shoulders for another look.

Heero snapped on a pair of latex lab gloves and gently lifted the object out of its lined case.  Every pair of eyes followed its progress and I smirked: _Come one, come all and feast your eyes upon the rarest of sights – one of two artifacts that, when aligned correctly with one another, will unleash marvels beyond your wildest dreams!_

Shit, that had sounded pretty good.  I should think about going into show biz.

“What’s first?” Quatre wanted to know.

“Photos,” Yuy informed us shortly, turning the long piece of metal this way and that.  The natural light caught on the myriad of indentations in its silvery surface.  Some were dots and some were more like dashes.  They kinda reminded me of Morse Code in print, but I knew they weren’t.  I’d seen a few strings of characters like these in my mom’s notes.  She’d tried all the obvious interpretations – Morse, I Ching, Mayan numerals, you name it.  None of the translations had resulted in anything other than pure gibberish in _any_ known language.

The markings remained mysterious, winking at us in the sunlight and hoarding their secrets, singing _nya-nya nya-nya nya_ at us in a frequency just out of human audio range.  They twinkled up and down the main beam of the object before turning at 90-degree angles to line the short, protruding arm at each end.  The thing still didn’t look like much of a key to me.  More like a stretched-out and squashed letter “Z”.  Eh well.  To each his own.

Heero moved toward the pristine drafting table that had been set up with a digital camera and retina-searing white lights.  As he clicked away, cramming image after image onto his micro SD card, Quatre sidled closer and beamed at the proceedings.  “Can you believe it, Duo?  We might be in the presence of a whole new element!”

I felt a smile nudge one corner of my mouth.  Yeah, you could probably guess how I’d sold the prince who has everything over there on aiding and abetting a little larceny.  Well, OK, not that I’d come right out and _said_ I’d be stealing it, but it’d been _implied._  In any case, the prospect of being the first to get scientifically verifiable data on a supposedly indestructible metal had somehow caused Prince Raberba Winner to knock a whole slew of ethical questions off of his desk and into the garbage can.

So if we really were looking at what we _thought_ we were looking at, then I guess that made this a rare event, but I didn’t get a buzz off of it like Mr. Robotics Student, over there.  More impatient than anything else, I tapped my feet – toe-heel-toe – until the vibrations reminded me that it’d been a helluva long time since I’d gotten a solid eight hours of shuteye in a real bed.  I found myself a gilded stool and slouched onto it, propping my chin up in my palm so I could watch Quatre do his best to assist Yuy in whatever he was examining now.  As the sun climbed higher and the minutes stretched longer, I slowly wilted against the countertop until I was using my left bicep as a pillow and blowing puffs of humid air on the polished stone, doodling in the quickly evaporating mist.

Over and over again, I spelled out the same four hieroglyphs: a loaf, a pair of parted lips, a lasso, and a majestic eagle.  I drew them left-to-right and right-to-left over and over again.  That was the brilliant thing about ancient Egyptian; it didn’t matter what way you wrote it because the characters always faced the starting point.  I didn’t realize I was humming until Quatre giggled and Heero deigned to glare at me.

“Is that ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’?” Quatre inquired.

“Yup.  My mother’s favorite song,” I answered.  Why else would she have left that song and _only_ that song on Solo’s iPod for me to find?  I’d been kinda a peeved on my brother’s behalf that his entire Hanson collection had been deleted.  Once upon a time, I would have given both nostrils to be able to listen to just one tune using Solo’s super cool earbuds.  Once upon a time.  Hah.  Yeah, all the great stories started that way.

Heero returned to work.  It looked like he was getting ready to move the show over to the electron microscope.  I recognized the model.  God, I’ve turned into such a Maxwell nerd.  As our self-nominated lab tech locked the object in the air-tight chamber for irradiating, he remarked, “You never said how you ended up with this specimen.”

“Um, I didn’t, did I?” I mused aloud.  “You wanna tell the story, Q, or shall I do the honors?”

Quatre’s eyes widened and then narrowed slightly as he added up what he knew of me and what he knew of our mutual buddy, Khushrenada.  “Duo?”  He stretched my name out until it was a full-length question.  I shit you not.  Huh, I guess he really had thought I’d get my hands on it legally.  How cute.

“Oh, well, it’s amazing what people just leave lying around,” I told him.  My grin felt a bit feral and it felt really, really good to finally let it out.  “There this poor, lonely thing was, smack in the middle of the desert without a soul in sight.”

“What?  How?” Quatre demanded.  Yuy’s lips quirked as he punched a few buttons and the machine kicked on with a low drone.

“See, I know this little place,” I began, kicking back against the counter.  “Out in the countryside – in _Egypt_ – and I figured if I took off for it, ol’ Khushy would toddle along after me.  So off I went to do a little reminiscing—”  Which had only reminded me of why I could not – come Hell or high water – fail.  “And guess who followed me!”

Smiling for my rapt audience, I continued my little tale of intrigue, “I guess he was feeling a little adventurous because he went down into the tombs to take a look around.  Must have gotten lost in there, though.  Lots of people do.  Especially if the exit suddenly caves in.”

Quatre gaped.  Yuy actually looked a little impressed.

Pointing to the microscope and Khushrenada’s prize within it, I finished with a flourish, “Left that in the car and being such a good friend and all, I couldn’t just leave it there for somebody to _steal.”_   Quatre blinked.  Yuy smirked.  Rashid sighed and muttered something in Arabic.  Probably ordering one of his gofers to call a good lawyer.

I shrugged off the lack of applause.

“But—what if someone got hurt?” Quatre sputtered.

“The more the merrier,” Yuy muttered and whadayaknow – he and I actually agreed on something.

Quatre looked between us and then relented.  “I suppose he was never going to just sell it to you.”

I guffawed at that.  “No shit, pal.  The only way I was gonna get my hands on this stupid freakin’ artifact was if he thought I was hot on the trail of the second one.”  And that wasn’t even the half of it.  I’d had no way of knowing whether or not Khushrenada actually _had_ one half of the key at all.  I’d figured that if he did have it, he’d bring it along for the ride, though.  He seemed the type to freakin’ sleep curled up in silk PJs with his favorite trophies tucked into the crook of his arm.  All I had to do was lure him onto my turf and keep him busy while I _appropriated_ it.  So far so good.

“So, what’s the plan if this thing really is the real deal?” I asked.

“We destroy it,” Heero promptly informed me.

“OK, um, how?”

Yuy nodded to one of Q’s goons and the case he’d been charged with.  “With that.”

I watched as the latches were freed and the lid lifted.  “Uh, great.  What is it?” I asked of the fist-sized, metal-and-glass doohickey sitting in the padded interior.  It was about the size and shape of a 16-ounce can of Diet Coke.

“An antimatter grenade.”

Wow.  He’d said my mom had gotten in touch with his professors back in Japan when she’d figured out what the gateway might be hiding.  Now I could see why.  Antimatter.  Damn.  That shit could wipe out anything.  Well, any boring, normal matter.  Outside of that all bets were off.

Heero’s contingency sounded pretty fuckin’ spectacular, but I’d seen enough Star Trek to wonder— “How’re you keeping it from blowing all of us to itty bitty bits right now?”

“Electromagnets suspend the antimatter particles in a vacuum.”

“Uh-huh.  And how long are the batteries good for?”

“Ninety-six hours.”  He checked his wrist watch.  “Of which fifty-seven remain.”

“Okie dokie.  So, if this is half of the actual key—”  I gestured to the electron microscope.  “—we just drive out into the desert,” which was why I’d asked to meet up at Quatre’s most remote and secure property, “dig a big hole, put the grenade in there with it, and wait for the batteries to die,” I summarized.

“Or use the launcher.”

Heero Yuy had a Goddamn antimatter grenade launcher.  Of course.  Jesus.

Still, I wasn’t gonna complain if this meant I’d be getting back to Trowa and the aforementioned begging I’d promised him within the next twenty-four hours.

The microscope, which had been whirring quietly to itself, suddenly hushed and, one very long and breathless second later, beeped.  Yuy leaned over his laptop and frowned at the data on the screen.

“Is it…?” Quatre began.

“Ninety-five percent silver, five percent platinum,” Yuy concluded.

For a moment, I was too shocked to even feel my own fury.  And then I was just _this_ close to tearing down the marble walls and smashing the massive bay windows with my bare hands.  That urge stuck with me for about five seconds before my mind engaged and something clicked into place deep within my brain: of course the thing was a fake.  The whole operation had gone down way too easily for it to be anything but.  Khushrenada had anticipated my move.

Heh.  Looks like he’d brought his game.

My snort of amusement turned into great, gulping bouts of laughter.  There were tears, copious wheezing, and much fist-pounding before my mirth died down to the occasional chortle.  Quatre didn’t ask me if I was all right.  He was looking at me with that penetrating stare of his, though, so he was probably pretty close to diagnosing my mental disorder.

“Looks like Khushrenada was on to your plan,” Yuy informed me.

“Whoo yeah,” I agreed, smiling so widely my teeth creaked.  “But he’s screwed up.  Big time.”

Yuy scowled.  “How so?”

Quatre answered for me: “He’s revealed that he does have half of the key – he made a cast from it and produced this fake.”

“Sure did.”  Khushy might have gotten the general dimensions from the rotting liner of that Japanese WWII munitions chest, but the markings were the real deal.  No way would he be able to replicate those unless he had access to the same sources my mom had used in her research.  And if he did have access to those, what the hell did he need her notes for, eh?  Why keep me alive unless I knew something he didn’t?  No, Treize had one half of the key, but had no idea what to do with it.  That’s what he needed me for.  That’s why we were playing this game; as sure as God had made death and destruction and despair, Khushrenada was never gonna give up until he got exactly what he was asking for.  Little did he know it was gonna be precisely what he deserved.

Yup, things were lookin’ up!  Now I could plan my next move and it wouldn’t be long before it was “check” and “mate.”

“What are you going to do now?” Quatre quizzed.  Maybe he’d picked up on my optimism because he didn’t look nearly as disappointed as I’d thought he would.  (And I guess my mental illness wasn’t too dangerous because he certainly wasn’t inching toward the exit with a placating smile plastered on his face.)

“Well,” I answered slowly, “if Rashid doesn’t mind, I’d love to try some of those award-winning pastries of his that you were talking about.”  The palace security chief sent me a startled look.  I beamed.  “And then, I’m gonna be needing to borrow your plane and pilot again.”  It looked like my mom’s message was gonna come in handy after all.

“Where are you going?”  This was from Yuy.

I waggled a finger at him.  “Hah.  Nice try, pal.  You, your field lab, an’ your nifty antimatter grenade are staying right here.”  By now Khushenada had to know who was helping me.  Neither Q nor Yuy were gonna be 100% safe until I took care of business.  The last thing I needed was for these two to bungle into the line of fire.

“Duo,” Quatre protested, “running off on your own again… this is exactly what Treize Khushrenada wants.”

“That may be,” I allowed.  “But if I told you where I’m headed, I’d have to kill you.”  It was as simple as that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ancient written Egyptian: Yes, Duo's musings will be important later. You will see!
> 
> Antimatter jargon type stuff: I'm borrowing heavily from (yup, you guessed it) Star Trek: The Next Generation and Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons." (BTW, Brown got almost everything about CERN wrong, and I've heard that the book is even more unrealistic than the movie... which I find very hard to believe, but Mr. Manny has a PhD in particle physics and he's read the book and was rolling his eyes in exasperation all the way through it.)
> 
> 95% silver, 5% platinum: I actually have a ring with this metal blend. It's crazy shiny and (maybe it's all in my head but) it seems really lightweight, too. Some of you have probably already guessed that the indestructible material that the key is supposedly made out of is supposed to be Gundanium. Of course, in this AU, there isn't a name for it yet, so I can't just call it that. Also, there are no Gundams made from it so there's no reason to call it Gundanium. Did that make sense? Arg. Never mind my author!FAIL.


	20. The Quest, Part 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme music: "It's beginning to get to me" by Snow Patrol  
> Trowa POV

Howard had been right about two things.  First, that he knew enough Russian to make sure we weren’t shot down over Siberia and, second, that my landing at Sakhalin Island would be a wet one.

“Eish!” I hissed, surfacing with a splash and a shake of my head.  Saltwater from the Pacific Ocean licked over my eardrums and burned the inside of my nose.  It gnawed at my skinned palms, still raw from wrestling with the seatbelt Duo had Bostiked.  My bruised shoulders screamed at me as I flailed my arms in the surf.  First, last, and only time I was ever jumping out of an airplane.  I didn’t care if I’d hit a luck in that Howard had skill with skimming the surface of the water in a plane designed for high altitude flight.  What the bugger and fuck did I know about aircraft?  I’d rather a bakkie and a horizon of desert dunes or a jungle dripping with steam.

I floundered toward the makeshift buoy that I’d tied to my pack, getting more water in my eyes for my efforts.  I was no swimmer.  I probably should have mentioned this to the barmy oom of a pilot, but all I could think of was Duo cutting his way through the glassy surface of the pool.  Kwaai and coaster.

“Think you can manage a short swim?” Howard had asked and I’d scoffed.  A bit of ghoefing I could do.

A sudden wave caught me off balance and I tripped over the jagged rocks beneath my feet, floundering like a moegoe.  If only Bryce and Martins could see me now.

Angrily grabbing for the buoy, I hauled both my pack and myself up to the craggy shore with slow, tottering steps.  My trek to the caverns where Howard had insisted Duo’s mother and brother had been heading eight years ago hadn’t even begun in earnest and yet I was already flagging.  The water alternately pushed me toward the promise of land and then pulled me back toward its depths, sucking all the warmth from my body no matter its inclination. 

I was numb long before I collapsed on a passably flat stretch of beach.  There were pebbles beneath my knees, but I couldn’t feel them.  I lifted my hands, watching as I curled my stiff fingers inward and then stretched them out again.  Despite managing that test of dexterity, my hands were shaking so badly I knew I’d never be able to hold a match let alone strike up a flame.  My entire body convulsed with shivers as I shucked off my wet clothes, biting back one curse after another.

I peeled my rucksack out of its waterproof bag and dug out one of the flares Howard had pushed into my pack.  I ignored the second set of clothes within.  They were dry and I was not.  It was hell just letting the wind rake over my wet skin, but I didn’t crawl into them like I desperately wanted to.  Instead, I grabbed the hunting knife I’d picked up in Tallinn.  Weapon in hand, I scanned the landscape.

The water, the rocks, and the wind were my only companions but I didn’t relax my guard.  Couldn’t.  If I dared, I’d collapse into a ball of freezing fokken misery.  I scrambled for kindling and lit a fire from the flare.  Curving my body as close to the tiny flames as I could, I gulped down a ration of fresh water and grazed through an energy bar just to keep my teeth from chattering.  When the fire burned down to a smolder and I was no longer in danger of soaking the only complete set of spare clothes in my possession, it was time to get dressed and move out.

I balled up my wet clothes in the waterproof bag and pulled out my compass from the depths of my pack.  I scanned the beach, found an overgrown trailhead, and headed inland.

“Watch out for the bears,” Howard had told me over a cup of scalding hot coffee in the pilots’ garage at Estonia’s main hub.  We’d been waiting for the next flight plan to go through, so he’d taken it upon himself to brief me on our destination.  “There ain’t much on Sakhalin other than them an’ the pipeline.”

“Pipeline?”

“Crude oil.  So you watch yourself, kid.  Stick to the trails unless you wanna have a run-in with a Russian an’ his rifle.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

“How can you be sure this is where Duo’s headed?” I’d asked him.

He’d sagged over his paper cup with a sigh.  “Like I said – I flew the Lady Manxwell an’ Solo out there.  They were going to meet up with some trekking company to check out the caves.  The big ones in the Vaida Mountains.  This was followin’ a trip to Mount Fuji.  They were keepin’ to the itinerary up ‘til Sakhalin.”

“What happened?”

“They never showed up back at the airport.  I was sitting around waiting for them to take the train back from Smimych when I heard the news about the Cessna that went down up north.”  He’d shaken his head.  “Why they went that way an’ what they did between them caves and that crash, I still don’t know.”

There were good odds that I did.  Laos – that’s where they might have gone.  It was possible that Helen Maxwell had realized she and her son were being followed, hadn’t dared going back to Howard who was probably being watched.  So they had gone on to another site either in genuine search of that bliksem key or to divert attention from what they’d found in Sakhalin’s caverns.  Had she been surprised to discover the Japanese munitions chest in Wat Dong Sao?  Is that why she’d taken what had been inside it – because she’d known the location of _both_ halves of that bloody artifact?  Had she taken a dobbel that she’d be able to destroy at least one of them?  And then she’d left her eldest son’s music player and a message behind for Duo just in case she failed and he took up her quest.

No, not in case Duo _took up_ her quest, but in case he was forced to complete it.

I had to pause and gaze up at the overcast sky.  It all came down to survival.  Rich or poor, a lord’s family or a troupe of mercenaries – it didn’t matter which.  The threat was the same and that was why Duo had no business shutting me out.  That was why Howard had dumped me in the bloody ocean.  That was why I was trekking through uncharted wilderness.  Duo and I _were_ maats.  I had every right to be at his side through all this.

Was I going to find him at these doff caverns?  I didn’t know.  There might be something here, though.  Some message from his mother at the very least.  At this point, this was the only lead I had and I was taking it.

It went against everything I’d been taught to make noise as I traversed the forest, climbing with the trail into the Vaida Mountains, but Howard had been adamant.  “Trust me, kid.  You’d rather face Khushrenada again than a mother bear.”

Elephants have been known to trample a man for a lot less than the protection of their young, so I could believe him.  I had knives.  I had flares.  I hadn’t had time to acquire a pistol in Tallinn, but I wouldn’t have trusted a mere bullet to stop three hundred kilograms of rampaging fury.

I couldn’t bring myself to sing.  I’d spend too much energy trying not to hurt my own ears.  Instead, I recalled a bit of homework I was to commit to memory: “To be or not to be,” I began.  “That is the question.”  I recited as I trekked, scanning the forest around me and trying to listen beyond the sound of my own voice.

Nothing stirred but the breeze.

Hours passed.  The sun finished its stretch upward and began its slow slump toward the opposite horizon.  I came upon a fork in the trail without warning and had to blink twice at the sign in front of me before I trusted it to be real.  I couldn’t read the Cyrillic that had been gouged into the wooden board, but under it some thoughtful, bilingual soul had scratched “Medvejih Tragedii Caves.”

The Cave of Bear Tragedies, according to the Great Google Spirit.  I snorted helplessly at the memory of Duo summoning the Internet to aid our quest back in that cheap and tatty hotel room in Vientiane.   God, he was such a goof.  Even through my anger, I missed him.  Feared for him.  Would kill anyone who raised so much as a hand against him.

“For who could bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely…” I said to the trail leading north and uphill, picking up my pace and scanning for any sign that I wasn’t alone out here.  With the ascent, I lost the cover of the trees.  Lush meadows and small, sparking lakes carpeted the mountainside and I could finally see where I was heading.  The urge to take cover in what grass there was clashed with my impatience.  In the end, I didn’t crawl on my knees and elbows up the slope.  Nor did I race my way to the caverns.  I walked, doing my best to impersonate a harmless backpacker.

Still, I saw and heard no one.

Nightfall was only a little more than an hour off when I scuffed to a stop at the cave entrance.  There were footprints in the dirt, but were any of them Duo’s?  When had it last rained here?  Not recently.

I checked the compass once more and then stepped inside.  The click of the torch’s power switch echoed, snapping from one rock wall to another.  The beam shivered and danced over stalagmites and stalactites.  In places that could have sheltered and amplified a campfire, I found paintings.  Ancient scribbles of ochre and soot.  I kicked bones.  Large ones perhaps belonging to those tragic bears.

And then I saw something strange.  A little engraving on the wall near a smaller tunnel branching off from the larger cavern.  It looked like an Egyptian hieroglyph.  No, not a hieroglyph, I decided, squinting at it.  It was a drawing.  A caricature of a long-haired Egyptian in profile.  Its right arm raised in the classic pose of the ancient Egyptians, elbow bent at a right angle and hand held flat as if pointing into the darkness.

Angling the torchlight into the gloom, I took its recommendation.  The new path drew me west before it split off yet again.  I hunted for another sign and found a different – simpler – etching.  It wasn’t a figure, just two angular arms.  One raised and the other lowered.  Just like the caricature’s had been.  I glanced back over my shoulder and took a moment; it couldn’t be a coincidence that each arm appeared to be exactly the same dimensions as the half of the key that had once lain in the chest at Wat Dong Sao.

I listed the evidence I had: Duo’s mother had been on a quest to find a mythical gateway and two halves of a legendary key; she’d written Duo’s name in ancient Egyptian on a temple wall in Laos above an empty chest containing the imprint of one missing half of the key; and now this rough likeness scratched into the rock of the cavern wall was leading me onward to the next marker.  I was on the right track.  Surely.

Drawing a fortifying breath, I chose the right-hand path that the second carving seemed to gesture to.  Again and again, that strange pair of symbols directed me deeper into the caves.  Unlike the first, however, the others were not placed at eye-level.  Some were higher up, others low.  Some carved into nooks behind dust-coated stalagmites.  Turning to follow the path beside one at ankle-height, I ducked to enter a narrow passage, but paused at what the torch’s beam revealed at my feet: a boot print in the mud.  Recently made.

I leaned forward, searching for a mate to this perfect – too perfect – track and smacked my head against the rough ceiling of the passageway.

I tried to bite back the explanation but a quiet “Eina!” eked out from between my clenched teeth.  Followed by an equally quiet gasp from behind me.

I whipped around, the sound of a soft whisper reaching my ears an instant before my torch revealed a pair of booted feet wedged into a high, natural ledge not two meters away.

“Trowa?” he breathed.  “What are you doing here?”

Before I could answer, Duo shook his head decisively.  With the sharp twitch of his chin, the shocked warmth in his expression shattered.  A cold fury took its place.  As his icy gaze slid back in my direction, I noticed the gleam of steel in his hand.   A knife.  I wondered how many times and how close he’d come to using it on me in the dark.

“No,” he told me and his tone was like the gates of Hell.  “Let’s not have this conversation again.”

“Ja,” I agreed.

He nodded, his lips tightening into a thin line.  His fingers lifted and then curled tight around the handle of the knife one after the other in a lazy sequence.  I tried – and failed – to think of something to say.

He drew a deep breath and then blew it out in a rush that ruffled his bangs before ricocheting off the cavern walls and dissipating into the gloom.  “Shit,” he bit out.  “What are you waiting for, eh?”

I twitched my chin to the side in question.

Duo nodded back the way I’d come.  “Go run and tell Khushy I’m in here,” he mocked.

Fury swelled in my chest, pushing the words out of my mouth on a snarl, “I’m not here with Khushrenada.”

“Then how’d you know where I was?” he dared.

“Howard.”

“Fuck.”  He tilted his head back to glare at the ceiling.  His lips stretched, revealing a toothy smile that was neither charming nor joyful.  “I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

I almost startled when he punched the side of his fist into the nearest rocky surface, his eyes flashing.  Never – not once – had I seen Duo lash out needlessly.  Not in fury, not in frustration.  Ja, we’d battled on the wrestling mat, but off of it he was a smiling, joking goof.  Most of the time.  But this – this was something new.  Was this the darkness that had first surfaced on the morning his father’s body had been laid to rest?  Was this what had made him contemplate a god who only thirsts for death?

“Duo,” I began and he rounded on me.

“You don’t understand,” he hissed.  I kept perfectly still, angling the torch beam below his face, but in the wash of the light I could see the lines of stress cutting into the corners of his mouth.  “Khushrenada is _right_ behind me.  Left a trail he could follow blindfolded and hog-tied to a railway crosstie.”

“Why?” I demanded, gripping the torch so tightly the metal groves bit into my tender skin.

He sighed, slumping back against the wall with head bowed.  “Doesn’t matter now.”

“Duo,” I entreated, “come down from there.  Please.”

“I dunno if I should be doing that,” he mumbled, turning the knife over in his hands.  “I’m pretty angry at you right now.”

I said nothing.  I didn’t believe for one minute that he was going to use that blade on me.  Duo would never.  Could never.  It was so clear to me.  I waited for him to realize it, too.  Eventually, he did.  He let the knife tumble from his fingers, clattering against the rock to the uneven floor.  Then he slid down from his perch.  I held out my arms.  He fell into them.

I clutched him to me.  His darkness terrified me and I couldn’t even begin to face that, but right now – _just_ now – he was my china, my maat, my kerel.

“Why, Tro?” he mouthed against my sweaty collar.

“We’re partners, Duo.”

His single bark of laughter sounded like a sob.  I rubbed his back even as I shifted a step toward the exit.  “Come on.  Before Khushrenada gets here.”

Duo shook his head.  “Too late.”

I refused to believe that.

“You gotta do something for me,” he begged softly.

I started to shake my head, but his hands were suddenly curling around my shoulders, his nails digging into my skin through the layers of clothing.  He was going to leave bruises.

“No!  You have to.  This is life and death.”

I stilled.  “What do you need?”

He reached back toward the ledge and lifted something about forty-five centimeters long from the shadows.  It was only about ten centimeters wide from top to bottom and at each end it bent at opposite-facing right angles, extending a bit less than twenty centimeters in each direction.  It shone dully in the torchlight and I gawped, recalling the chest we’d found in Wat Dong Sao.  This was what had once been inside.  Or something identical to it.  My idle musings on the trek to these caves – had I been right?  Duo’s mother had found _both_ halves of the key but only dared to take one with the intention of destroying it?

“Khushrenada’s got the first piece,” Duo confided.  “If he gets his hands on this…”  He paused.  Calculated.  “Take it,” he commanded, thrusting it into my arms.  “Hide it.  Never tell me where it is.  I’ll distract Khushrenada.  You contact Howard after we’ve gone and—”

“Nooit!  I’m not letting you just stroll over to that—”

“—and make sure Khushrenada doesn’t know you’re here.  Jesus Christ, Trowa.  If he knew you found this place, he’d…”  Duo shuddered, his eyes squeezing shut with anguish.

“He won’t,” I swore, but Duo didn’t appear to have heard me.  His eyes opened and his gaze swept over me from head to toe, like he was committing me to memory.

My chest tightened.  “What—?”

He darted forward and kissed me on the lips.  Hard.

“I love you,” he told me.

And in the next breath, he was gone.  I swept the cavern with the torch beam, but I was alone.  If not for the hard, metal angles of the key pressing into my chest and arms, I might have doubted that he’d been here at all.

I scooped up his dropped knife and hurried after him as quietly as I could, keeping the torchlight pointed down until I needed to search out the markers that had led me into the caverns’ depths.  I’d just spotted the one behind the stalagmite when laughter tumbled down the labyrinth of tunnels.  Duo’s laughter.  Obnoxious, brash, filled with fury, and loud enough to cover the sound of my footsteps as I scrambled to close the distance between us.

“…find this humorous,” a man remarked and Duo stopped laughing.  I was forced to slow my progress to gingerly placed, silent steps.

Duo said something in response, but the words didn’t reach me.  What did reach me, though, was the sound of flesh striking flesh.  A gasping wheeze.  The sound of phlegm being gutturally sucked into the back of a throat and the splatter of spittle.

I turned the torch off as I crept out of the narrow passage and into a small chamber.  Through the next tunnel, I spied a glow.  I heard the man’s voice for a second time.

“I’ve grown tired of chasing after you, Lord Maxwell.”

“No sense of adventure, huh?” he drawled.

“Rather, time is money,” Khushrenada informed him, “and your mother has already cost me years of it.”

“She always had expensive taste.”

“Fetch the artifact, my lord,” Khushrenada ordered, biting out each word with precision.

“I don’t know where it is.”  The assertion rang through the caves and sent a chill down my spine.  Duo was telling the truth.  The key was with me and he didn’t know exactly where I was.  He was brilliant.  Befokken brilliant.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Tell me about it.  I guess you’ll just have to get your hands on my mom’s notes, huh?  But, oh, wait.  They weren’t in the safe, were they?”

There was a heavy beat of silence as Duo’s sharp smile filled the cavern like a thick, cloying steam.  I could _feel_ it.

“Yeah,” he drawled, “I got the call last night that someone broke into my house.  Bet the apartment in New York is a mess, too.”

The apartment?  The house?  Those were _our_ places.  Mine and Duo’s.  Khushrenada had no right to set foot across those thresholds.  No right to send his men into our lives.  My anger at Duo’s recklessness was _nothing_ compared to what was roiling through me now.  My jaw clenched until my teeth ached.  When I got my hands on Khushrenada—

Duo chuckled darkly.  “Too bad they didn’t find what you sent ‘em there for, huh?  Know why?  ‘Cuz they don’t exist anymore.  Her notes?  All her research?” he goaded.  “Poof!  Ashes.”

I held my breath.

Khushrenada sighed.  “Then that is what you will be.  If you can’t or won’t tell me what I want to know, then I’ve no use for you.”

A metallic click – the hammer of a handgun being thumbed back.  My mind blanked.  I was rushing forward before I was aware of it—

_Snap!_

My entire body jerked at the sound.  My heart stopped.

“Hm,” Khushrenada remarked.  “The bullet wasn’t chambered.  Well, one is now…”

“No!”

The shout bounced and bounded.  I scrabbled in its wake, dimly aware that I’d been the one to issue it.  Stumbling into the illuminated chamber, I charged toward Khushrenada, determined to knock him down and then keep on knocking his head against the rocks until it was nothing but bloody pap.

“Trowa!”  Duo’s shout halted my suicidal charge.  Six pistols were pointed at me, but I didn’t see them.  Nor the men holding them.  I only had eyes for the man who was holding a gun to my lover’s forehead.  My lover, on his knees on the dusty, rock floor, arms bound behind his back.  Duo’s face was pale with defiance and fury.  Helpless.  I was not going to let him die for a fokken _artifact._

I held it out, ignoring the way Duo squeezed his eyes shut in denial.  “Duo in exchange for this.  That was our agreement,” I reminded him.

“Hm.  So it was.”  He didn’t even have to motion for one of the men to take the initiative and approach me.  His people were well-trained.  Five chambered bullets remained aimed at my chest as a single man stepped forward and took the key before leaving the chamber.

“Well played, Mr. Barton,” Khushrenada congratulated me.  “Unfortunately, we’ve begun a new game.”  He smiled down at Duo.  “You just left him in New York even though he knew where to find the other half of the key?  And here, all this time, I’d assumed he didn’t know a thing.  Astounding.”

“He doesn’t,” Duo insisted.  “Brought him here with me from Egypt.”

“You did no such thing.  Let’s not pretend otherwise.”  Angling toward me without taking his eyes off of Duo, Khushrenada demanded, “Who brought you here, Mr. Barton?”

I didn’t answer.

Khushrenada smiled wider.  “Perhaps a… discussion for a later time.”

Duo’s hands fisted even tighter.  The plastic bindings dug deeply into his flesh.  “Don’t.  Touch.  Him.”

“Tell me what I want to know, my lord, and I won’t.”

“Let’s play rock-paper-scissors for it,” Duo suggested with false levity.

 “A game!” Khushrenada enthused.  “I do love games.  Let’s play one with your mercenary lover first.  It’s called nails-knuckles-wrist.  Do you know how sensitive a person’s hands are, Lord Maxwell?  Why, with the right application of force, a man will say anything.  Shall we ask Mr. Barton if he knows the location of the gateway?”

Before another gunman could secure his weapon and approach me, Duo screamed “No!” with such vehemence that I couldn’t maintain my line of sight on Khushrenada’s mercenaries.  His anguish pulled my attention toward him and the hot tears streaming down his face.  “No,” he commanded Khushrenada, “I will tell you and you will not allow any harm to come to Trowa.”

“Thank you, my lord,” the man purred.

Duo seethed.

Khushrenada clucked his tongue at him.  “Really, we both knew it was always going to be this way.  Don’t be such a poor sport, Lord Maxwell.”

Duo said nothing.  Satisfied that he’d claimed the final word, Khushrenada signaled for his men to prepare to move out. 

I stared at Duo as the rage that held his shoulders taunt released him and he slouched, head lowered in defeat.  I glimpsed the glimmer of a falling tear in the torchlight.  If not for the sound of stomping boots, I might have heard it land on the floor of the cave.  I didn’t extend my arms for the man assigned with binding me, but I didn’t resist him, either.  I couldn’t let my own fury fool me into thinking I could take on all five of them plus Khushrenada.  All I could do now was bide my time.  Sooner or later, Khushrenada and his pack of braks were going to make a mistake.  And when they did, they’d be dead.  Every one of them.  Guaranteed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I thought about describing the moment Duo found the half of the key, but I think we can all guess what kind of emotional mess it was.
> 
> Next up is one of my favorite POVs ever -- Captain Barton!


	21. The Quest, Part 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the POV so many of you have been waiting for. I hope you enjoy it as much as you've enjoyed the anticipation. 
> 
> Captain Barton POV
> 
> List of South African terms: http://themanwell.livejournal.com/28711.html
> 
> Theme music: "I See Fire" by Ed Sheeran

The third bankie from the end of the second row was empty.  Our boy Trowa had left us four months ago, but no one was inclined to take his seat.  It left a hole in the mess hall.  It left a hole in all of us.

Not that I’d ever expected him to spend the sum total of his days with a troupe of old, leathery ooms like us.  In truth, I’d never been happier when he’d told me his plans to head to America.  I’d hoped our boy would move on to better things, but _that_ bit of news had exceeded all my hopes.  No one would have guessed that his friendship with Maxwell’s lightie would bring such an opportunity.  Trowa’d hit a luck there.

Of course, there was nothing to stop Dominic Maxwell from breaking my boy’s heart, but if that happened, at least Trowa wouldn’t be here.  Wouldn’t be just another hired fighter, renting out his life, putting himself between bullets and blades for his next meal.  If there was one thing I could have said to Duo, it’d be this: _Don’t throw my boy Trowa away._  

I wasn’t a spiritual man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but that was the prayer I’d taken up the moment Trowa had been called away to Laos – the moment he’d leapt up from his meal and dashed off to the barracks with that larny mobile pressed to his ear and a scowl on his face.  I’d known what was coming.  I hadn’t tried to stop him.  Why would I?  Trowa might be young, but he was a man.  I was proud of him.  I’d tossed Martins the keys to the bakkie, the one with three-quarters of a tank of petrol, and told him to crank the engine.

I’d taken the very same vehicle little more than a week later to drive our boy back to the airport.  This time he’d been wearing a suit and toting a roller bag.  He’d looked to have changed, but I knew his rucksack was tucked inside his suitcase.  The necktie and brand names were just another layer of camouflage.  My boy Trowa had a gift with camouflage.  He had a good skill.  He was needed.  He was going to a better place than I could offer him.  After all the close calls of his childhood, he was getting a fresh start.  I’d taken him to the airport myself just to guarantee he wouldn’t waste it.

On the way back, I’d reached over and fumbled open the glove compartment for a pair of sunglasses and found Trowa’s knife, sheath and all.  Not forgotten, but simply left behind.  Even now, it was still there.  And I was still here and so was that bloody empty bankie in the middle of the mess hall.

“Aweh, Captain,” Wallace greeted, pulling me from my woolgathering.  He held a heaping plate for me and I stretched out an arm to take it.  “Quiet watch?”

“Ja-nee,” I told him, biting back a sigh at the sheen of oil on the surface of my bredie.  “Just tell me you didn’t use the last jug of 10W30 in this.”

He rattled the dented ladle at me.  “Could be worse as you very well know!”

I did.  Trowa’s cooking was worse.  A smile tickled my lips at the memory of trying to gnaw through his venison steaks.  I recalled the persistent heartburn that his too-spicy bredie had given me.  More than once, I’d spent a sleepless night wincing up at the ceiling of our makeshift barracks.  If I happened to glance across to the neighboring pallet, I was guaranteed to swap looks of identical misery with Bryce.  Old men like us didn’t have bellies of iron pots anymore.  Hell, there was one time I’d caught the boy adding coffee grounds to the beans.  Of all things.

At least he’d grown to be a better fighter than a cook.  His soup alone could fell an elephant.

Passing by the coffee station, I filled a metal cup for myself and waded into the crowd.

“Whatkind, Captain!” Kask coughed out around a mouthful of breakfast.  The sight didn’t make the portion in my hands look any more appetizing.

“Morning!” Martins exclaimed as I lowered my aching bones onto the seat beside his.  After six hours marking off time on the pavement, my knees were howling.  A lifetime of being on alert did that to a man.  It wasn’t going to happen to our boy, though.

Across the table, Bryce was wincing his way through his own meal, muttering about the dubious honor of the troupe’s worst cook finally being transferred to a new chef.  He startled suddenly, likely due to a boot to the shin.

“Watch it, man,” Martins advised.  “You wanna have kitchen duty next?”

He snorted.  “Why not?  I could do a damn sight better than this.”

“I heard that!” Wallace bellowed.

A round of chuckles followed.  It helped ease the first bite down my gullet.  Didn’t help it stay down, though.  For that I had to guzzle half of my scalding hot coffee.

“You hear from the kid today?” Martins asked, but I only shook my head.

“Day three, still no email,” Bryce assessed.

Ja, I didn’t like it either. 

“You send him a shout?” Kask called down the table.

I had.

“Eh, well.  He’s caught up in that American dream,” he declared.  Everyone in the room pounded on their table in optimistic agreement and Kask acknowledged the approval with a nod before turning back to his dish and spoon.

Martins and Bryce were less inclined to drop the subject.

“He’s never missed a check-in before,” Martins reminded me.

“Even sent us an email during his coffee break from them stupid security staff meetings he’s gotta sit through,” Bryce added.

“I’ll go down to the housing office and send him an email when I’m off duty this afternoon,” Martins decided.

I held up a hand.  “I’m off now.  I’ll take care of it.”  I got a grunt of thanks from each man.  The thickened atmosphere in the room lightened.  I even felt a mite better for having made the promise.

We three tried to stomach as much of the stew as we could until Martins’ belch echoed twice around the room and Bryce threw his spoon down in the congealing remains of his meal.

“Jesus, Martins.  You could eat the ass outta a dead rhinoceros,” Bryce complained, standing.  “No wonder you can’t get that cute little thing in building maintenance to kiss you.”

“Shut it, Prince Charming.  The last date you had was the four-legged variety.”

The whole troupe guffawed and sniggered.  Just like old times.  But if this really were old times…  My gaze moved toward the empty bankie again.  Right about now, Trowa’s full attention would be on his plate as he anticipated both men turning their banter on him.

“Our boy Trowa here could give you some pointers,” Martins might have announced.

Bryce might have rebutted, “What do I need pointers for?  I ain’t the one eating the assholes outta roadkill.”

At which point, Trowa would have quietly interjected.  “No amount of pointers could make either of you moegoes right.”

And that would have sparked another mealtime ruckus.  Dropped plates and noses smeared with cooking grease.  Battered and bent spoons flipping through the air to the tune of laughter as everyone lagged at the sight of our boy Trowa giving those two a good skopping.

None of that unfolded, but everyone pictured it.  It was there in each pair of eyes that turned toward that blazing empty bankie.

Our boy had better not have landed his arse in trouble.  I certainly hoped I’d – _we’d_ – taught him to look out for himself well enough.  I’d done my best, but given what he was up against…

I pushed away from the table as Martins and Bryce supposedly quit each other with a dismissive sweep of an arm and a roll of the eyes.  The whoops and chuckles coming from their appreciative audience got even louder.  This wasn’t the end of it.  Not by a long shot.  I ducked out of the room before the next round of wysing started up and the men started placing bets on who’d be the first to lunge and who’d be the one in the headlock.

It was midmorning.  A clear day.  All the little ones in the residences had long since rushed off to the day’s lessons and the entire compound seemed to breathe easier for it.  I know that’s what I did.  Wasn’t easy seeing those boys and girls racing around the courtyard’s jungle gym every afternoon, overhearing their little boy and little girl arguments, their shrieks of joy and breathless giggles.  That was never Trowa.  Between toddling around, pointing his chubby finger at everything from butterflies – “Un, deux, trois!” – to mags of ammunition – “Un, deux, trois!” and holding his own flesh together with his bare hands as I’d sewn up the cut from his first encounter with a machete, he’d never gotten the chance to just be a child.  In letting him go, I thought I’d made up for that.

I headed for the main office, but didn’t push my way in to ask for a moment with the computer.  I didn’t trust any of the administrators or their machines.  Not since I’d gotten the call two weeks ago:

“Barton,” I’d answered despite not recognizing the number on my battered mobile’s display.

“Your young friend, Trowa Barton, is in very serious trouble,” the caller had informed me.  “I’m sure you’re aware of the men following him and his friend, Dominic Maxwell, in New York.  They are on the payroll of my employer – who is incidentally _your_ employer – Mr. Treize Khushrenada.”

The plastic casing of the disposable mobile had groaned in my too-tight grasp.  “You have ten seconds to convince me not to track you down and peel you like a bloody melon.”

“You don’t know what kind of man you’re working for, do you?  Allow me to enlighten you.  Khushrenada is obsessed with obtaining some very specific information from Dominic Maxwell.  He will use anything and _anyone_ he can against him.  Maxwell has lost his mother, brother, and father.  Trowa Barton is next.”

“Who are you?”

“Someone who wants what you want – Khushrenada’s sudden and quiet disappearance from the face of the Earth.  I’ll contact you again when he makes his move.  You must be ready if you want to have any hope of saving your son’s life.”

And with each passing day that I didn’t hear from my boy, I was beginning to think that his life was already on the line.

I still had the phone number saved in my mobile’s incoming call logs.  Did I dare dial it?  His parting instructions had been to warn me not to.  Perhaps a payphone.  Something less obvious.  Something not connected to Khushrenada’s empire.  Something less likely to be traced directly to me and the men.  I decided on the graffiti embellished phone box at the public library across town.  My knees wouldn’t thank me for the urban trek, and it likely wouldn’t matter in the end, but it was the best I could do.

_“We do the best we can and live with the rest.”_

Still, my boy Trowa deserved better than what little I could give him.  I bloody hated having to live with that.

“Excuse me, Mr. Barton?”

I turned and offered a warm smile to the young lady Martins has had his eye on since we arrived.  I knew her full given name, but the embroidered tag on her maintenance uniform read “Cathy” so that’s what we all called her.  “Ja, Cathy?”

“There’s someone here to see you.”

“Is it?”

She nodded.  “I asked him to wait by his car while I came to get you.”

“Ah.  Good thing.”  As I looked out toward the road, a felt a touch on my arm.

“This— They aren’t here because of Trowa, are they?” she fretted.  “Have you heard from him yet?”

There was nothing I could say to ease her mind.  Although Trowa hadn’t been particularly impressed by her mothering in the two weeks he’d lived here, _he_ had certainly made an impression on her.  I’d asked her once about it.

“He reminds me of my father and little brother,” she’d said.  I’d seen enough grief in my life to know better than to ask about their whereabouts.

She fidgeted and her red hair seemed to shimmer in the sunshine.  “If you need anything…  I have a little bit saved—”

“You keep it,” I encouraged firmly.  The troupe wasn’t especially short on funds, just information.  “I’ll let you know when I hear from him.”

With that, we parted ways.  I set my sights on the front gate and approached, leaning against the railing as I peered out into the street.  Parked on the curb was a dusty, white limousine.  I held my position and watched for movement.  A full minute passed before the driver’s side door opened and a man got out.  He was taller than me.  Wide in the shoulders, muscled from head to toe, and he had that flat look in his eye.  It was the look of a man who has chosen to devalue his own life for the sake of his employer’s.

“I am Rashid Al-Kubaisi, chief of security for Prince Raberba Winner of Qatar.”

I nodded.  “Bodrick Barton.”

“If you have a moment, my employer would like a word.”

I said nothing.  The silence continued until Rashid Al-Kubaisi explained, “He is a friend of Lord Dominic Maxwell and would like to offer his assistance if you require it.”

Only a fool would walk away from this without further investigation.  “I’ll speak with him.”

Al-Kubaisi nodded and lifted his arm to mumble into the microphone strapped to the inside of his cuff.  A moment later, I’d crossed the street and was seated in the air conditioned comfort of the limousine.  To my surprise, it wasn’t a robed, Qatari man who waited for me.

“I’m Quatre Raberba Winner,” the young, blonde man informed me, looking more like a boy on his way to the golf course than a Middle Eastern prince.  “Dominic Maxwell is a friend of mine.  And, by extension, so is your son.”

 _“You’ve seen Trowa?”_   I nearly asked, but knew better than to reveal so much upon a first meeting.  I maintained my silence.

“Duo – Dominic, I mean – is heading into a very dangerous situation.  I don’t know where he is now, but he borrowed a plane and pilot from me.  Their flight plan took them to Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan.  He didn’t make any effort to conceal his destination, so I’m sure he’s been followed by a man named Treize Khushrenada.”

“Ja,” I answered.  If he was unsettled by my stoicism, it didn’t show.

“I have no interest in what Khushrenada is after.  I just want to help Duo.  We both do.”

“We?”

“Myself and Heero Yuy.  And of course Trowa Barton, wherever he is.”

Heero Yuy.  I’d heard the name.  Trowa had spoken of him briefly, warning me that he’d been involved in the goings-on in Laos.  What bothered me more than his reappearance was the mention of Trowa.  He certainly wasn’t in this larny vehicle and it sounded like he wasn’t with his china, either.  So where the bloody hell was he?

I had so many questions, but in the end the only one I asked was about Yuy, “How is Yuy involved in this?”

“He and his professors at the Tsukuba research facility in Japan believe they have a way of destroying the artifact that Khushrenada’s after.”

A valuable artifact, clearly.  Something too valuable.  So valuable it was slated for destruction.  And my boy Trowa was caught up in the search for it along with his young man.

“We don’t know where Duo’s heading or if Trowa’s with him, but we have a jet standing by.”  He handed me his card and a disposable mobile phone.  I took both.  “We’d like to assist you in helping them.”

“In exchange for what?”

The young prince shook his head.  “Duo’s father and mine were old friends and business partners.  And, I was there on holiday in Vientiane when Duo’s father died.  I wish I’d been able to do more for him.  Maybe now I can.”

Perhaps he could.  The key would be ensuring that he did just that and no more.  Good intentions were easily formed and twice as easily destroyed, most notably in the face of greed and ambition.  Two things a lightie like Prince Quatre Raberba Winner would know a good deal about. 

“I’ll be in contact,” I told him and knocked on the window.  The door opened and I got out, squinting into the glare of the sunlight.

The moment the door shut behind me, I turned to Rashid.  “If Khushrenada is really as dangerous as your prince fears, why are you letting him get involved?”

The bodyguard frowned fiercely.  “It is precisely because he is dangerous that we _must_ intervene.”

To that horrifying truth, I had no reply.  Only silence.

I watched as the car pulled away and fought to keep my breakfast in my belly.  My boy was supposed to be safe.  He was supposed to be starting a new life, but he was just as caught as the rest of us in Khushrenada’s web.  I had no doubt that our graft with a subsidiary of his company had been a carefully planned and executed strategy.  Did Trowa know about it?  If so, why had he missed his weekly check-in?

Stuffing the business card and mobile into my vest, I resumed my trek to the library, more determined than ever to reach my contact in Khushrenada’s inner circle.  Just as I stepped onto the pavement, my mobile buzzed from inside my trouser pocket.  The air left my lungs in a rush when I saw that it wasn’t a call or message from Trowa.  It was in fact the number I’d been setting out to dial.

Pressing the phone to my ear, I glared up at the cloudless sky and barked, “Barton.”

“I hope you and your men are prepared, Captain,” the man on the other end of the line said.  He never had told me his name or how it was he’d come to know Khushrenada’s movements and intentions, but I knew I’d be a fool to discount him.  Men had been trailing my boy Trowa and his china during their every outing in New York; I had the photos to prove it.  And if this Prince Quatre was correct in his assessment of the situation… well, regardless, it was almost a relief to know there was finally something to be done about it.

“Tell me where Trowa needs us,” I demanded.

He complied.  “Japan.  Yamanashi Prefecture.  Kawaguchiko Station.  Aokigahara Forest.  Pack for a long hike.”

A click and then the dial tone buzzed in my ear.  I glanced down the road in the direction Winner’s white limousine had gone.  I still didn’t know whether I could trust him, but it didn’t matter.  Trowa might need me – or he might need me to keep an eye on his china – and that’s what it all boiled down to.  My boy needed me, and I wasn’t going to give him any less than my best.

Pulling out the new phone I’d been given, I made the call that would get me where I needed to be the fastest.  “We’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Thank Allah,” he breathed and then rallied his composure to instruct, “We’ll be standing by in hangar twelve.  Small aircraft entrance.”

“Got it.”

I pivoted on my heel, ignoring the shrieking of my old knees, and strode back to the mess hall.  The doors banged open like a pair of gunshots.  All movement along the now skewed tables and toppled bankies ceased.  Bryce looked over his shoulder and swung about so that Martins – now in a firm headlock – could see the source of the commotion at the entrance.

I surveyed my men, weighed the risks, and gave the order.  “Wallace.  Kask.  Martins.  Bryce.  Grab your packs.  We’re heading out.  Our boy needs us.  Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Trowa's not really the captain's son, but I think it's pretty obvious that the sentiment is there. I mean, Empty Nest Syndrome much? Besides, anyone with the resources to look into Trowa's background would find out that he was raised in the Barton Troupe. Stands to reason there's some sort of familial attachment going on there.
> 
> In other news, you guys can totally guess who the informant is, right? RIGHT?
> 
> And who's ready to geek out with me over the captain's given name? Yup, I do love me some Bodrick Barton.


	22. The Quest, Part 9

**Warnings:**  Language, evil thoughts, eviler deeds, Manny's favorite plot twist EVER. Bwhahahahaha!

 **Disclaimer:**  The Gundam Wing characters are not mine. Neither is the Tomb Raider franchise. Welcome to my geekgasm.

* * *

**Trowa POV**

Theme music: "Have you got it in you?" by Imogen Heap

* * *

"I love you," he'd said, pressing the words against my lips, pushing them into my ears, imprinting them on my skin. Three words that burned and scarred. Three words that I would always hear spoken in Duo's voice no matter where I read them or who uttered them.

Three words and not a peep since. Not to me. He'd had plenty to say to that bliksem Khushrenada, sprinting off to collide with the man like an angry bear defending his cave. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I could forgive him for goading a man into firing a loaded gun point blank at his head. The empty  _click!_  of the hammer hitting nothing but air had sharply, suddenly, and irrevocably encapsulated my single greatest fear. If I so much as looked Duo in the eye right now, I was sure to start screaming at him. Given a close enough range, there would be fists and blood and bite marks as well. It was just as well Khushrenada's men were too well-trained to give us the opportunity for any sort of contact or communication.

They kept us angled away from each other through our stumbling departure from the caverns and during the short, grassy trek to the helicopter. The frogs in the tiny lakes dotting the dusk-lit mountainside didn't know what to make of our passage. Some continued their songs. Others fell silent. It should have been just me and Duo here, leaning against each other's shoulders and having a jol while arguing about why that was.

On the helo, I was buckled up behind the copilot's seat and Duo was shoved into a harness somewhere near the rear of the craft. When I tried to glance back to suss out his status, a rifle butt was pressed against my cheek. I got the message. I faced front, my muscles quivering as I struggled to keep my strength in reserve. Khushrenada's mercs were good, but no man was perfect. I'd have an opening. I waited and watched for it.

The flight was dark. We had to be dozens of clicks from civilization. The desert hadn't even been this completely black except on moonless nights. It was the ocean beneath us, then. We were heading away from Sakhalin, but to where?

The pilot set the helicopter down in darkness. I was hauled out and across the black tarmac to a softly lit plane. Golden light poured out of the portholes and down the open hatch. The brief survey I took of the area yielded only one identifying feature – a dim glow over the trees. A city. A small one.

"Now, Lord Maxwell," Khushrenada began with renewed patience and cheer, "where is the gateway?"

"Mount Fuji." Duo's gritted teeth flattened the words, crushing them like dust beneath a boot heel.

"Mount Fuji," Khushrenada echoed, clearly amused. "I doubt it. Try again."

A pause – an undoubtedly defiant glare – and then—

A hard shove sent me up the steps of the plane. In the clatter of boot tread on steel, I missed what Duo said next. I doubted the intel would have weighed in heavily with my own schemes. Odds were I wouldn't know a single befokken thing about where we were headed, but at least I had this: my seat on the airplane turned out to be the one I'd had on the outbound flight from New York. In fact, this was the very same private jet. I smiled grimly down at the scuff mark I'd left in the textured wallpaper beneath the window. I knew this plane. I'd reconnoitered it after Khushrenada had gotten bored with trying to make conversation. I hadn't looked him up in New York and spat out one half-truth after another for the pleasure of his bloody company. My silence had eventually convinced him to stop trying to convince me otherwise.

From London to Cairo, I'd been left to my own devices. A single trip to the loo had been more than sufficient. I'd counted the exits and the seats, measured the length of the craft with an even stride. As I'd passed an unmarked door, Chang had snapped, "Don't piss in the corner."

I'd glared over my shoulder as the handle had given way. "I'll try not to," I'd replied, getting a glimpse of what was within. The entire thing had taken little more than a moment and I was mostly sure my discovery had gone unnoticed. Chang had talked over the rattle of the latch and my rebuttal had covered the soft bump of the door closing again. In just one moment, and with a sweep of my gaze, I'd seen a private office. With the flick of a wrist, I'd brushed my fingers over a deadbolt on the inside of the door.

I had a last resort, a defensible location to which I could haul Duo if things turned violent, a place to take cover. Eventually, they'd kick the door in (or shoot it to pieces once we landed), but I had to believe that a man like Khushrenada – a man who got a cheap thrill from holding a gun on another human being – would have a small arsenal in his private domain.

It wasn't much of a contingency, but it was something. It was an option. If I had to make a choice, I could. I wouldn't have to sit here and watch Khushrenada's men beat my lover to pap for the toppie's inflight entertainment. Despite my hands being bound behind my back and even though my bruised and cramped shoulders were screaming at me, I knew I could have my seatbelt unbuckled in a heartbeat.

I planned it out: the merc seated across from me was within range; a boot to the chin – he'd be dazed long enough for me to twist around and catch the metal buckle in my fingers; lift, twist, slip down onto the floor, and take cover beside my seat and then brace myself to spring; take down the first oke to enter my line of sight; strike with shoulder first and drive him into the floor; roll off; get to Duo – he'd be fighting, too – then we'd plough our way to the private office; lock ourselves in; find something to cut through our bindings; the solid teak desk would get tipped over; the arsenal raided.

I pictured it in my mind – Duo and I crouched behind the toppled desk, an array of guns and ammo forming a semicircle around us on the soft carpet. I'd kiss him. He'd smile. And everything would be all right because I knew Duo. Knew that he'd never give up without a fight. Knew that he could fight – with fists or knives or even a pistol.

The plan was set. I waited and wondered if I'd have to use it.

I kept my eyes trained on the hatch of the plane and got my first glimpse of Duo since we'd left the caverns. He was pale with blotches of red on his face. Either his fury was boiling out of his skin or he'd been struck, I wasn't sure which. But his eyes were dry – shining, even – and I saw that flash of pure rage. The bloodlust that had given me a skrik more times than I could count. I couldn't convince myself that it was just a trick of the light or a figment of my imagination. Not anymore.

That look in Duo's eyes made my mouth go dry with absolute terror. Ja, he'd fight all right, but could I count on him to not get himself killed in the process?

Then he saw me and that manic light faded, was pushed aside as our gazes met.  _My_  Duo looked back at me and I could breathe again.

"Keep going," his escort insisted and Duo moved past my seat without breaking stride. I tracked his jaunty progress. He was raising a ruckus so I'd know where he was. He flopped down with a huff in a seat perhaps six paces behind mine. "Sheesh, man. Lighten the hell up. It's not as if—"

"You will be quiet or I will gag you."

I could almost hear Duo's sullen glare. The leather of his seat groaned as he turned. Perhaps to look out the window. I stared out through mine. If only there were something to see, some building across the way with windows that showed our reflection. My rage was little more than the faded ghost of a memory now and I ached just to be able to look him in the eyes again, but the only eyes I could see were my own against the darkness. It was still the middle of the night and we were in the middle of nowhere.

Khushrenada and Chang were the last to board. The former strolled down the length of the plane with the Chinese man glaring at any and all in his wake. I had yet to sort those two out. Chang didn't seem to be taking much enjoyment in his boss' pet project. I'd never seen him smile. Or even relax. He hated the entire fokken universe. Was it because of all the risks Khushrenada was taking in getting his hands dirty with the likes of us and Chang resented being involved with hostages and death threats?

I recalled his angrily hissed words as Wat Dong Sao had begun to crumble around us:  _"You have risked everything."_

What was that supposed to bloody mean?

I decided it didn't matter. Khushrenada was holding Chang's leash. It was Khushrenada I ought to be concerning myself with, not his pet scholar.

Neither of them chose seats in the main cabin. I heard the rattle of a door latch and, a moment later, the door to the private office closed behind both of them.

Bugger and fuck. My contingency was out.

But it wasn't likely I'd have to scheme a new one. With Khushrenada not around to enjoy the view, I doubted his men would be interested in soeking with us. That was the difference between street thugs and mercs. The former took every opportunity for a skop, skiet en donner. The latter never took risks they weren't paid to. Their job had been to capture, secure, and – if necessary – force us to talk. As long as Duo was cooperating, they had no reason to bother with us.

That didn't mean I was about to doss the flight away. No matter how mind-numbingly uneventful it turned out to be. The monotony was briefly broken when Chang stomped out of the office not an hour after takeoff and claimed a seat across the aisle. I watched and listened, but could infer nothing useful. My frustration buzzed, matching the RPM of the tireless jet engines.

The sun rose upon a clear horizon before we landed. Dawn looked different from this altitude. More minty greens and buttery yellows than I'd ever glimpsed before in a sunrise – and I'd seen a fair share of them – but that didn't make me like our situation any better. In fact, I could say with confidence that I hated flying. More than half of the time I've spent in one doff jet or another has been under duress.

The whir of the landing gear and the squeal of rubber sliced through the silence of the cabin as we touched down near the ocean for refueling. The pilot took off again without opening the hatch. Wherever we were, immigration had not been an issue. Either because Khushrenada had guaranteed the inattention of the authorities or because we hadn't actually crossed any borders. We were in Russia, then?

From the window, I finally saw a landmark I could name without hesitation: Mount Fuji. From the plane, it didn't seem to rise up so much as the sky didn't dare touch it.

So we were in Japan. Duo had convinced Khushrenada that this location really was somehow related to our destination. I hated that I didn't know what my lover was scheming. I ought to know. His efforts to keep me in the dark were not going to aid us.

I thought of the half of the fokken key that he'd shoved into my grasp and ordered me to hide, the artifact I hadn't hesitated to trade for Duo's freedom. Maybe he'd been right not to trust me with more.

 _That_  thought was crushed by a brilliant wave of fury. The only reason Duo couldn't trust me not to trade information for his bloody life was because he was bent on risking it in the first place and  _that_ was simply not on.

We landed at the foot of the white-capped mountain and waited. I wasn't offered any food or drink, nor did I think Duo was. I could have used the toilet, but doubted I'd be allowed. My shoulders throbbed. I couldn't feel my hands below the bindings. If released, the sudden change in circulation would be agony, but that would not make me any less dangerous. Freed and in pain, they'd have a completely gavtol mercenary on their hands, and Khushrenada's men knew it.

When the bakkies rolled out onto the desolate landing strip, Khushrenada emerged from his office. Two men left the plane with him and I heard the bangs and clatter of cargo being unloaded. Bit by bit, the activity moved over to the bakkies. The distant sound of tailgates being lowered, supplies being slid across metal beds, and doors slamming shut eventually eclipsed the hum of the engines powering down and the knock of the cargo hatch sealing shut. The merc standing over me reached down and unhooked my seatbelt. It was time to move out.

Again, I went first and, again, I was not permitted to glance back toward Duo. There were no civilian airport staff in sight as we crossed the landing strip to the cars. I was exhausted and sore, but the feel and scent of the icy wind coming down off the mountain was like an entire flask of Martins' coffee, jolting me awake. My head cleared. I was fully alert.

"Get in," the merc at my side ordered.

I glared at the interior of the 4x4. "I'll wait for Duo. Then I'll get in." I braced myself for the disciplinary blow I'd just earned.

"There's no need to worry, Mr. Barton," Khushrenada interceded from the next Land Rover over. "We're all going on the same field trip. I hope you don't mind that your dear friend will be riding with me. Would you like Professor Chang to keep you company?"

He didn't wait for my response to that before he was gesturing the man over to the vehicle I'd been assigned. Chang complied with a scowl.

I didn't give rocks how much the  _professor_  hated me. I kept my head up and my attention on the plane. A moment later, there was motion at the edge of my vision as Duo was walked down the steps and over to the waiting caravan. Two Land Rovers and two bakkies in army green. No one would be stopping to question us. It was as big a relief as it was a concern. If civilians didn't get involved, then they wouldn't get hurt. And as Duo's safety was my priority, anyone who tried to come between Khushrenada and his goal was on their own. But if no one tried to stop him, then it was up to me and Duo to get ourselves out of this. Timing would be everything. Once we were no longer useful, we'd be disposed of.

I wasn't going to let that happen. Khushrenada had made a big mistake in bringing me along, in letting me live. He was arrogant and overconfident, and it was going to get him killed.

With Duo settled in Khushrenada's vehicle, I kept my word and got in without further resistance. Chang claimed the shotgun seat and I was strapped down between a pair of mercs in the back. It was almost like being in the bakkie, trekking across Africa with my troupe. I missed them. I wanted them here. I could have used the backup.

But by the time I'd thought to call them, it had been too late. Howard and I had been working our way through a pot of burnt coffee in the hangar at Estonia's main airport when I'd realized it. I'd taken out my mobile phone and stared at the black screen and felt nothing but relief. If my phone's battery had been clinging to the slightest charge, I might have dialed. I might have asked Howard to turn around; I might have asked the Captain to break the troupe's contract. Back in New York, I hadn't called him because I'd had neither information on Duo's destination nor the means of getting there. On the tarmac in both Egypt and again in Estonia, I'd had both but—

" _You're your own man now, Trowa."_

I'd been right to think it was a warning. If I called for backup, I'd be responsible for the outcome. I couldn't have asked the troupe to forfeit steady, low-risk graft for this. I couldn't risk his life like I'd risked Victor Maxwell's. Duo was in the middle of this and, as his maat, so was I. Perhaps I should have called, but sorting out Khushrenada was my responsibility and I was not going to settle for half-victories this time.

The drive was quiet and the forest on either side of the highway was lush. Impenetrable, at first glance. We passed several small, roadside car parks before pulling into one that was empty of vehicles with the exception of a pair of 4x4s. A half dozen men dressed in army fatigues were already standing by. Khushrenada had probably called ahead and ordered them to scout the area. I sat in the backseat with Chang looking on as the men quickly roped off the entrance. I didn't have to ask to know that Khushrenada wouldn't want any outsiders interrupting his quest.

"What is this place?" I asked instead and, to my firmly concealed surprise, Chang replied.

"Aokigahara."

The name meant nothing to me. I gave Chang a flat look via the rearview mirror.

He elaborated, "Suicide forest. People come here to get lost in the woods. To die. Do not attempt to escape the trail. You will not be able to find your way back."

If he was determined to think that, I'd let him, but I was more than capable of navigating some doff forest—

"There are no streams," he added, correctly assuming my silence was the result of doubt rather than indifference. "Very little wind. Few birds if any. It's a dead zone."

"A dead zone?"

"The earth's magnetic field is broken here." He tilted his chin up, indicating the great volcano in the distance. "According to Japanese folk tales, Mount Fuji was the site of a divine visit. A goddess handed down the knowledge of how to work steel, giving Japan its first katana. Some still consider it a weapon of the gods."

"It's a story."

"There is some truth to all tales."

And he was hoping to find another technological mystery here. That fokken gateway.

"Heed my warning, Barton," the man said, reaching for the door handle. "Do not stray from the path." He slid out of the Land Rover just as I was hauled from my seat and pressed up against the side of the car.

"Don't do anything stupid," I was told by my new handler, "or I'll shoot you and take the pay cut."

A part of me that hadn't existed before I'd met Duo wanted to know how much he'd been docked so far. Just how stingy was billionaire Treize Khushrenada? In the end, I merely nodded to show that I understood. My bindings were cut.

"Walk ahead of me and keep your mouth shut."

I did as I was told. Khushrenada gestured Duo forward. Like me, his hands had also been freed. He rubbed his wrists gingerly, flexing his fingers, curling them in and out and in again. They looked like claws. Khushrenada didn't appear to notice. He stayed at Duo's side several paces behind me and my escort.

Chang led the way. The trailhead was clearly marked and the path was a rotting boardwalk. As we moved into the forest and the canopy closed over us, I felt shivers dance along my skin. Not from the renewed circulation in my hands and the freedom to stretch out my shoulders. There was something about this forest that wasn't right. I could almost taste it. The deeper we went, the more strongly I felt it. These ancient, gnarled trees with their moss-covered branches seemed to be watching us, their exposed roots greedily soaking up the sound of our footsteps. Chang had been right. There was no wind. No running water. No birds or creatures of any kind. There was no sound at all. There were no landmarks. From left to right, the scenery appeared to be the same. The trees, the boulders, the moss – the same pattern was repeated again and again. And the further we trekked, the more unsettled my stomach became. Was I feeling the effects of the dead zone Chang had mentioned? If so, I wasn't one out. The merc ahead of me kept checking his compass only to give it a shake or a tap before dropping it back into his vest pocket.

We trekked until the sun broke free of the mountainside, and then we came upon a gateway. I caught my breath as I looked up at it. It was old – two great beams standing at perfect right angles to the ground. Across the top, two additional beams had been laid, these parallel to the ground and each other. In the center of them, something seemed to be missing. The key.

We were here. This was happening.

I scanned the small clearing, noting the equipment Khushrenada's scouts had hauled into the forest well before our arrival. Much of it had already been set up. Chang addressed those first, taking inventory.

Kushrenada pushed forward, beaming with victory. "Ladder," he demanded. One was produced from a long, metal chest – the sort of chest that fits snuggly under the rear window of a bakkie. Within were tools, handheld and battery powered. An air compressor. A small diesel generator. A jackhammer.

But what gave me the most concern was the large, long hole that had been dug off to the side in the shadows. They'd found a spot relatively free of tree roots. I couldn't see the bottom from where I stood. It was at least two meters – six feet – deep.

I stepped back and away from the center of the activity, my gaze seeking out Duo. He was still under guard and not even looking in the direction of the gateway. Instead, he was staring off into the forest, smiling that eerie grin I could no longer afford to ignore. The grin that made me remember his sudden question – "Do you believe in God?" – and his insistence that all a higher being wanted from us was destruction and death. A God of Death. Was that Duo's plan? Was that why he'd chucked off without me? Was he scheming to kill Khushrenada – and everyone on this bosbefok quest – or die trying?

I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Not because I feared my own death, but because I feared the monster inside of Duo. I didn't know it, didn't understand it. All I could do was imagine the worst: my lover – the man I wanted to marry – a killer on a suicide mission.

Desperate to look him in the eye again, to call him back from that terrible path, I stared at him hard, willing him to just glance over.  _Look at me!_

He didn't. He stared into the forest with silent amusement curling his lips. I followed his gaze but found nothing worth remarking upon. Although… there did seem to be something familiar about this small clearing and the unfinished gate at its center. Where had I seen this before?

It took a few moments for the answer to come to me, but when it did it was all I could do to keep my reaction veiled. Ja, I had seen this place before. It had been in a photograph on the box of a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle Duo had found sitting on his brother's old bed.

"Weird," he'd muttered. "Solo never liked puzzles much. Well, this kind, anyway."

That was because it had been a prelude to the trip Helen Maxwell and her son Solo had taken. I could imagine it. A mother gently knocking on her son's bedroom door, sitting down beside him on his bed, and saying, "I have a surprise for you."

"What is it?" he might have asked.

" _Where_  is it," she might have corrected and then revealed her gift. A jigsaw puzzle of Aokigahara. The suicide forest. The dead zone at the base of Mount Fuji where myths and legends might be real, tangible things. Like the gateway looming over us.

A metallic chime and clatter drew my attention back to the top of the gateway where a man was balanced on the ladder, two of his comrades poised to grab his belt to yank him back to safety. He lifted the first half of the key and settled it between the unfinished, horizontal crossbars. It fit perfectly. I tensed as he lifted the second, rotating it 90 degrees, clearly intending to create a cross with the center bars, the leg at each end angling counterclockwise.

Was this it? The gateway that could unleash terrible power was about to opened? We needed to be moving, dodging and weaving through the trees, before that happened. I calculated the distance to Duo and then from his position to the nearest tree capable of providing adequate cover. Would I have time to get him sheltered while the others were distracted by their success? Or would there be some sort of instantaneous blast?

The second piece slid against the first, clicked once, twice, and then locked in place.

We held our breath, as motionless as the silent forest. I was ready to move. All I needed was a distraction.

"Nothing's happening," the man called down to Khushrenada, who lifted a brow in Chang's direction. The professor ignored him.

"Try it the other way," Khushrenada suggested when his expert said nothing.

At this, Chang growled, "That symbol—! No. The symbol of Japanese Buddhism is correct. Not that backwards megalomaniac's swastika!"

Khushrenada squinted in thought. "Misguided though Hitler was in many respects, the results of his search for the occult may be of value to us now. He may have found a powerful symbol but not its context." Turning back to the men, he ordered, "Reverse it."

They did.

Again, nothing happened.

I fought the urge to glance at Duo to gauge his reaction. Was he allowing himself a smirk because the gateway really was nothing more than legend after all? Or was he poised to strike down the man who'd destroyed his family for the sake of a myth? I was absolutely sure that escape was not part of his plan and that made me want to lock him up in a cupboard where he'd be  _safe_ from his own mad schemes.

I swept the area with my gaze, taking an inventory of our captors. Several were focused on the gateway, but just as many were watching me and Duo. Bugger all. Chang was frowning so hard he had to be giving himself a headache. Seeing this, Khushrenada turned to Duo. I tensed.

"Lord Maxwell?"

"Hitler groupie."

The factual acknowledgement made the man smile. "Enlighten us."

"Well, twentieth century European history isn't really my thing, but I'll try. See Adolf Hitler—"

"No, my lord. Enlighten us as to the workings of the gateway."

He shrugged. "Well, uh, I dunno. Looks like it's broken. I mean, it is pretty old an' everything."

Still appearing amused at Duo's stroppy display, Khushrenada gestured toward me. Two men grabbed my arms, forcing them behind my back. I clenched my jaw to keep from wincing. It was only a little pain and I needed to keep my focus on Duo.

"OK, fine!" Duo capitulated, a tremor of fear in his voice. Oddly enough, that was a relief; it meant that the boy I'd fallen in love with years ago was still in there somewhere. He wheedled, "Maybe I've got an idea. Just—"

"Then let's hear it."

A gun nudged the back of my head.

"Let. Him. Go." Duo's voice was terrible now. A snarl of rage. "Don't touch him."

Khushrenada held up his hands. "Agreed. No one will touch young Mr. Barton."

My arms were released, but at least two additional pistols were aimed at my chest.

Khushrenada continued seamlessly, "In the interest of time – as I mentioned earlier, I'm not fond of it being wasted – this is what I propose—" He nodded toward one of the metal bakkie chests. "Empty that."

Two men knelt down to relocate the contents. Chang quickly joined them, fussing over the equipment.

Duo rasped, "What are you—?"

"I am giving you an incentive to expedite the process." Khushrenada looked proud of himself for having thought of it.

Duo shook his head emphatically.

I was shoved toward the recently excavated hole. The now-hollow chest was dragged over to where I stood. Chang met my gaze and I glimpsed something like pity in his eyes.

Khushrenada explained, "As promised, no one will touch your young mercenary, my lord."

The hole was deep enough to bury a man. The chest was large enough to hold a body. My breath caught.

"Hell no!" Duo hissed. "You can't—! You can't just—! I'm not going to stand here and watch you—!"

"Mr. Barton," Khushrenada interjected smoothly, "if you would lie down?"

No. Never. The odds were against us, but if I let them put me in the ground, Duo would have no one.  _No one._

I fought. My boot heel crashed into a knee. My fist smashed into a nose. My elbow caught a solar plexus. The blade of my bare hand chopped at a throat. I could hear Duo's struggles over my carefully measured breaths. I fought as hard-quickly-smartly as I could, but in the end, it didn't matter. A rifle butt struck the back of my head. Dazed and dizzy, I slumped to my knees. Hands caught me under my arms.

My eyes rolled up into my head. The world spun. Duo screamed my name as I was lifted, tucked up against cold metal, and dropped into darkness.

* * *

**Notes:**

Yes, I went there. But really, if I was gonna keep the God of Death thing from the series when it came to Duo, then I was totally gonna find a way to translate the unconscious-and-floating-through-space thing for Trowa. Character torture is equal opportunity, folks.

Aokigahara is a real place at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan. With a funky magnetic field. Rumor has it cheaply made compasses are kaput there. It has only recently (in the last few decades) become known as Suicide Forest due to a creeptastic Japanese novel set there about a group of friends who set out for a hike, but end up being driven to suicide. To this day hundreds of people go to Aokigahara to leave the trail and lose themselves. Or yes, hang themselves. I haven't visited this part of Japan yet, but yes it's on my list. (I promise to stay on the trail.)

"It's a dead zone" / "The earth's magnetic field is broken here" might be direct quotes from the film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider". Or pretty gosh darn close.


	23. The Quest, Part 10

**Warnings:**  Language, evil thoughts, God of Death, and Machiavellian scheming

 **Disclaimer:**  The Gundam Wing characters are not mine. Neither is the Tomb Raider franchise. Welcome to my geekgasm.

* * *

**Duo POV**

Theme music: "Demons" by Imagine Dragons

* * *

Twenty-four inches wide. Eighteen inches deep. Just under six feet long. I knew this last little factoid because I watched them –  _I just stood there and watched them!_ – lower Trowa into the truck box. They had to bend his knees so he'd fit. I stared hard, willing him to fight back. To just Goddamn move or twitch. I was still staring – still waiting for him to merc up and still knowing he would – he just  _would_  – when the metal lid was shut and locked. I kept expecting to hear him kicking and punching at the walls of the box. Waited for the ruckus, waited for those bastards' hands to slip and the box to crash to the ground. Waited for Trowa to roll out and come up swinging. I held my breath just so I wouldn't miss it. But there was nothing.

Nothing at all. I had done  _nothing at all as he'd fought with everything he had and I hadn't helped him – fought for him – saved him!_

He was in there. Alone. Trapped. Doomed.

Twenty-four by eighteen by seventy. That was about twelve cubic feet of air. Almost that of a coffin. I knew this because I'd calculated it once before. To pass the time during the sermon, to keep my mind off of the nearby grave and the man in the wooden box and what it all meant. I hadn't been able to think about my d— _him_  being gone forever, so I'd dived into the story problem that had been the highlight of last year's physics class: how long could you survive if you were buried alive?

Normal air was about 20% oxygen. Humans exhaled about 16% oxygen and 4% carbon dioxide with every breath. Normal air was less than half a percent carbon dioxide. Ten percent was toxic. At one-fourth of a cubic foot of air – ten breaths – per minute, how long would it take Trowa to reach that? I did the math as Khushy's goons shoveled dirt into the hole.

_He was down there, unconscious and looking so Goddamn young and vulnerable and I what the fuck was I doing just standing here!?_

I did the math three times before I accepted the truth. After forty five minutes, he'd be choking and coughing. He'd start to panic if he hadn't already and he'd be breathing faster, exhaling more of the very compound that was slowly killing him. After seventy minutes, he'd probably be dea—

_And I was just standing here doing nothing!_

"NO!"

My shout blasted through the clearing. Khushrenada lifted a finger to his lips.

"Shh. Let's be civilized, Lord Maxwell. There's no need to shout. And please, stop struggling. Mr. Barton's clock is ticking."

I blinked, flexed my arms and realized I'd collected a couple of groupies. Two – one on each side, pinning me back against a tree. The sound of heaving breaths boomed in my ears. I was panting. My muscles were burning. How long had I been fighting to get free? Even as the question crossed my mind, the answer came to me: ever since the moment I'd understood what that empty truck box was for, I'd been struggling to get to his side. And even after I'd lost sight of him – all the while my brain had been working out how much time Trowa had left to live – my body had been on autopilot.

No, not autopilot. I knew what was in control. I knew what it wanted, what it thirsted for.

 _"Khushrenada's blood,"_  the Reaper hissed lustily.  _"Give me control and I will take what's mine!"_

I was tempted. So Goddamn tempted to give in, but I couldn't. The Reaper could give me vengeance, but there was no guarantee he'd give me back my Trowa. I fought his siren's song with everything I had in me.

_Trowa! Think of Trowa!_

I gritted my teeth and breathed in through my nose and exhaled through my mouth. The grip on my arms tightened. Glancing from one goon to the other, I counted one soon-to-be-puffy eye and one bloody lip. What else had I – the Reaper – done to them in my mindless panic and bloodthirsty fury? Skinned shins? Bruised bellies? Too bad no one had thought to make a video.

I drew in an even deeper breath. Calm. I needed to be calm now. Still, knowing that I was allowed air freely while Trowa was buried alive—

_Why the hell am I just standing here!_

I grunted as my head was slammed back against the tree. The hands holding me were gonna leave bruises, but I didn't care. The God of Death didn't care. I felt nothing but fury. Craved nothing but complete and utter destruction.

"Trowa," I reminded myself. I had to focus on Trowa now. I stopped trying to kill my handlers and allowed the throbbing of my tender skull to sift through the rage and clear my head. There was nothing I could do for Trowa by fighting right now. I had to save him and there was only one way to do it.

"OK," I said. Closing my eyes, I followed the sound of my own voice up from the dark, crushing depths of the ocean of vengeance. I swam – I  _strained_  – for the surface. I gulped one lungful of air after another until I stopped thrashing and started treading water. "OK. I'll show you what you have to do. Just keep the hell up."

Khushrenada gestured for me to lead the way. Shaking loose from my new friends, I hurried across the clearing. I had to grit my teeth and fist my hands to keep from throwing myself on that fresh mound of earth –  _Trowa's grave and I'd just stood there and let them bury him!_  – and raced through the old gateway to the steps beyond.

_Focus!_

Because he would die if I didn't, I did.

Temples across the world were pretty much the same in one respect – they were the way stations between mortals and the gods. Of course, gods could never live on the same level as the rest of us pathetic humans, so there were inevitably stairs involved. These weren't nearly as steep as the ones at Wat Dong Sao –  _Where I'd left my dad to die!_  – but there were just as damn many of them. Wide, long, earthen steps blocked in by rotting timbers. At first glance, they were deceptively easy to mount. But with each step, I felt like it was taking longer and longer. How many minutes ago had Trowa been—

I checked my wristwatch but realized I hadn't marked the time when they'd—they'd—! So I didn't even know how long it'd been.

_Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!_

I pounded up the long, earthen ascent, hating myself for being so fucking useless. Hating fate for letting Trowa find me on Sakhalin at the worst possible time. Hating Howard for not keeping him  _safe_ and out of Khushrenada's reach like I'd asked! One simple request. Just one. Even that had been too much for the old man. I should have known it would be. How could I have been such a moron? Such a stupid, gullible twit.

Sixty-three steps – sixty-three  _stupids_  – later, I panted to a halt in front of a near-to-life-sized carving of Buddha. It was virtually identical to just about every other Buddhist icon in Japan: carved out of a large, oblong rock which also served as a backdrop. A figure was seated in the foreground with his legs crossed before him – the opposite ankle resting either on top of or beneath each knee – and his arms were bent at the elbow, hands raised slightly on either side of his chest. Classic lotus position. But this image was different from all the others I'd seen in one way – instead of facing forward in meditation, this Buddha was looking off to the side, his single open eye contemplating the distant slope of Mount Fuji for all eternity.

"This is it," I wheezed as Chang mounted the hill seconds – minutes or hours? – later.

Behind those squinty, narrowed eyes, he was speculating. He glanced from the stone carving and back to me. Khushrenada was trailing more than two dozen steps back with his merry mercs. None of them saw the look Chang gave me. "Use your head," he quietly advised. "Barton is not alone."

"What?"

"Use your head," he repeated under his breath and then moved to examine the relic.

I gaped at him. What the hell was his game? Was he actually expecting me to trust what he said? Still, his advice sounded like what my dad would say and I recalled our game: "The head honcho will use his head as he meets the obstacles in his path head on!"

OK, so. Use my head. Right.

I pondered that for the three excruciatingly long minutes it took Khushy to get his tush up to the top step. He paused and frowned at the carving. "How does the key fit?"

That was the question and it was worth more than a million bucks. It was worth Trowa's life. Maybe more than just  _his_  life. Now I had to decide what to do. Did I trust that my mother's message was pointing me toward the correct answer? Or was she playing it the other way – showing me how to sabotage anyone who made it this far? And could I count on Khushrenada to follow my instructions exactly? He'd already taken the initiative in ordering the key to be reversed down at the false gate. Suppose he thought I was trying to scam him and he went with the opposite of what I said? I couldn't let him out-think me. I couldn't let him win. My mom, my dad, and Solo had all died because of this fucking quest, and Trowa was trapped six feet underground all because of Khushrenada's greed. I couldn't let him just walk away whistling Dixie!

But I couldn't have both vengeance  _and_ Trowa. I knew it. Hell, even Chang knew it. Khushrenada was fucking banking on it. I was furious enough to rip the sadistic sonuvabitch limb from limb. If he were dead, the mercs would give up and I'd be able to get to Trowa. All I had to do was take Khushrenada down. I could do it. I was gonna do it. I tensed and waited, watching every step that brought him near.

_Just a little closer!_

At that precise moment, Chang moved. He stepped between me and my target and our gazes met. His words echoed between us. "Use your head," he'd said.

His advice infuriated me – I wanted blood, damnit! – but the window of opportunity had shut. If I lunged now, I'd have to get past Chang and I'd lose the element of surprise.

I spun around to glare and snarl in silence at the statue. If I could have hated it out of existence, I would have. If I could have pummeled it to dust, I would have broken both my hands to do it and considered it a bargain. But this Goddamn thing had survived centuries. One little kick from me didn't so much as rock it on its foundation. My foot bounced back off the low, stone platform at the carving's base. Too high to be a step. Too low to be a table. It seemed to be of particular interest to Chang, who knelt down to examine it. I ignored him, the ledge, and the throbbing of my abused toes, I curled my fingers into a fist and wished with all my might that I could plant each and every one of my knuckles in Khushrenada's smarmy face. Wished I could reach right through his skull and squish his brain with my fingers. I turned toward the sonuvabitch and demanded, "You have to dig Trowa out."

"I'll take care of it once we're done here."

"No. Now. I'm here. I'm cooperating. This is the gateway."

No response. The heartless bastard. I tried again, "He's got something like forty minutes of air before the carbon dioxide—!" Biting off the rest of the science lesson, I snapped, "Look. You win, OK? You Goddamn  _win."_

I'd fucked up. Trowa should have stayed in New York as collateral. Leaving him there had sent Treize Khushrenada a message: first, that I was confident I could get him what he wanted and second, that Trowa didn't know anything of importance. Khushy was supposed to leave Trowa alone and follow  _me_. But I'd fucked up. Trowa was here –  _buried alive!_  – and now I was minutes away from losing him.

Khushrenada considered me with a contemplative pout. My fury was unabated and the Reaper was screaming, shrieking, rattling the bars of the cage I'd stuffed him in, but Trowa was trapped in the dark. I had to save him. I would do  _anything_ to save him. I would do anything to protect him.

 _"Keep him safe."_  It was my mantra. Three words I'd murmured as I'd held a rifle in my hands for the first time, a promise to protect my new friend, Trowa Barton, from shadowy enemies hiding among the sand dunes. It was the vow I'd mouthed silently before joining our bodies for the first time. I swore it anew now. I would protect Trowa to my dying breath.

"He's all I have," I confessed, and then I slid down onto my knees in the dirt and pleaded, "Please."

Khushy enjoyed that. I could see it in his eyes. He liked seeing me broken and begging.

I pushed harder. "It's been almost twenty minutes and it's gonna take at least that long to get him back out of there. He'll be dea—" My voice cracked. "—soon.  _Please."_

"Show us how the key fits," Khushrenada urged gently, "and you'll be free to return to him."

If I could have thought of anything else to say, some other bargain or plea, I would have offered it, but I had nothing and we both knew it. I nodded, bowing my head. There was no point in trying to change the bastard's mind. There was no point in pretending I wouldn't give the man anything in exchange for Trowa's life. It was game over. "Yeah. OK."

I climbed to my feet and faced the facts: vengeance for my family was no longer an option. I'd prepared myself for this moment – I'd warned my family that I couldn't hold onto them any longer, that when push came to shove Trowa would come first. I was the right decision – the  _only_ decision. Still, there was no getting around the fact that no matter what I chose now I'd be letting someone I loved down.

"I'm sorry," I breathed at the stone figure. I hoped my dad heard me. I hoped he, my mom, and Solo understood why I had to forgo vengeance. The Reaper gnashed his teeth and swung his scythe in fury, ripping me apart from the inside, but I held him off with gritted teeth and trembling hands.

Hot tears clumped my lashes and splashed onto my cheeks as I brushed and scratched at the moss that had grown over the carving, easily finding what I was looking for: a pair of horizontal grooves – one up high on the stone background and the other tucked inside the Buddha's hand. Digging with my blunt nails, I carved through the forest grunge until metal gleamed in the canopy-filtered sunlight. Goddamnit. I had not wanted to be right. I hadn't wanted my  _mom_ to be right. Why couldn't this have been just another empty fairytale?

I would swear a blue streak about it later when Trowa could teach me some more sweet South African curse words and then we'd get in an argument over whose mouth was the dirtiest and—

_Focus!_

Someone was snarling. The blood in my veins was rushing. My control had slipped and it was happening again. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. Silence. I took a deep breath. Let it out. Opened my eyes. My vision was blurry and my face hot, but the Reaper had been pushed back. For now.

Resolve renewed, I turned back to the gateway hidden in the statue. I'd cleared one half. On the other side, beneath the Buddha's profile which faced the mountain, I found two more grooves: one down low, next to the figure's knee, and the other in the palm of his hand.

I leaned back slowly, wiping my runny nose with the back of my wrist and smearing my tears with the cuff of my shirt.

"They fit here." I gestured to the Buddha's hands, first to the one beneath his chin. "Half of the key sits in his hand but hangs down low, like he's giving out power. Like it's pouring out of his hand. The other half—" I pointed to the hand that opened over empty space. "—rises up past his shoulder, like he's calling it down from heaven."

My voice was thickening and my eyes were stinging worse than ever, but I forced myself to continue, "This is the gateway. I know it doesn't look like one, but that was the point. Whoever made this – you can see that same metal, the one the key is made out of, hidden here inside the stone. Once the key's in place, it'll make a circuit, like an electrical circuit."

"What happens next?" Chang asked.

"I dunno." I truly didn't. "And I don't care. You've got your fucking portal," I told Khushrenada, "so now it's my turn."

"I haven't yet made my move," he complained.

 _"Well, hurry it up!"_  I almost screamed but somehow didn't. Still— that sonuvabitch and his Goddamn games. I hoped he choked on 'em.

Khushrenada flicked his fingers and two men, each bearing half of the key, moved toward the statue. As they stepped forward, I inched back. Chang followed my movements with his dark eyes, but said nothing. I bit my lip and glanced back down the trail, uninterested in Khushrenada's prize so long as mine was in mortal danger.

I was just standing here while he was  _buried ALIVE!_

The first half of the key snapped into place with an eerie chime. I whipped around and saw that it'd been placed precisely as I'd said. Oh, God. What had I done? I swallowed back my fear and tasted the hot, rising tide of the Reaper's rage. It felt like congealed blood coating my tongue and burned the inside of my mouth like acid. I could let it take over. It was right there, just a thought away. All I had to do was give in – fall into my own little La La Land. I could let the Reaper face what was happening while I curled up into a quaking ball of "Please God, please don't let him take my Trowa" in a dusty corner of my consciousness.

No!

I couldn't. I wouldn't. Because—Trowa.

_Protect him. Save him. Keep him safe._

Even if it meant giving in to Khushrenada. Even if it meant opening the gateway and giving up the secret my mom had died to protect.

The second half of the key shone like a knowing smile in the murky afternoon light. The utter quiet of the moss-covered trees pressed in on my ears and chest. My heart strained. I braced myself. I wasn't the only one. The mercenaries shifted warily. Khushrenada had to actually nod for the second key-bearer to get a move-on. With obvious hesitation, he did. Everyone winced when this chime echoed, cutting through the soul-sucking silence of the forest.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then everything just  _exploded._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually did research on how long a person could survive in a coffin if buried alive. I read that it could take anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to run out of oxygen, but that's not really the big issue. Carbon dioxide poisoning is a more immediate threat. I scratched out some calculations and came up with the figures Duo mentions. So let's just pretend that my last math class wasn't something like fifteen years ago and that I know what I'm doing. K'thanks.
> 
> Duo has finally come face-to-face with the God of Death. Now that he's confronted it, is that the end of his inner struggle or the beginning? Hmm…
> 
> Whose side is Wufei really on? More on that very soon.
> 
> Up next is my all-time favorite scene EVER. Can't wait for you guys to read it.


	24. The Quest, Part 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trowa POV
> 
> Theme music: "A Shadow and a Dancer" by The Fray
> 
> Aaaaand you may need some tissues for the beginning of this one. I certainly made a mess of myself when I was writing it.

Darkness.  Complete and absolute darkness.  I reached for my face, banged my knuckles against close, metal walls, and that’s when I remembered all of it.  Khushrenada, the gateway, the bakkie chest, the hole.

I clamped one hand over my nose and mouth, trying to keep the air in my lungs from bursting out.  _Mos doff._   As if I could bloody ration it through my fingers.  The other hand I pressed to my face, fingertips encountering eyelids and then eyelashes.  I blinked.  Ja, I was awake.  I was alive.

But for how long?  And what was happening with Duo?

I rolled sharply, slamming my shoulder against the wall of the chest.  If I were above ground, it’d be likely to topple.  And if it could topple, I might be able to roll the bakkie chest and jar the latches loose.  I twisted and tried the opposite side for good measure, but it didn’t shift, didn’t rock, didn’t so much as vibrate.  The sound of the impact was more of a dull thud than a clatter.  I wasn’t above ground, then.  I was buried in the hole that’d been meant to be our grave.

There was no chance of me reaching Duo’s side now.  The chest was made of durable, polished aluminum.  The latches were on the outside.  Even if I could raise enough of a ruckus to break the hinges, I’d be smothered by six cubic meters of soil before I could move.

I kicked at the lid of my coffin.  I was furious enough to scream, but screaming would accomplish nothing except kill me faster.  I pressed the illumination button on my watch and checked the time, but it was pointless.  I didn’t even know how much air I’d had to begin with.  What did it matter that nearly twenty minutes had passed?  They were twenty minutes I was never going to get back.  They were twenty minutes in which anything could have happened to Duo.

He was counting on me and I bloody well owed it to him to hold on as long as humanly possible.  I made an effort to slow my breathing, mimicking slumber.  Inhale… exhale.  Wait.  Inhale… exhale.  Wait.  My whole world became those careful breaths and, after a dozen repetitions, I started to resent each feeble effort to delay the end.  Hate it.  Dread it.  Perhaps it was crueler to conserve my air.  I desperately didn’t want my life to end like this: alone and in the dark, having failed Duo.  If I timed my breaths to save air, it would take me longer to die – and I was going to die – but it would also give me more time to list all of my failures and contemplate all the things I would never have.

Tears spilled from the corners of my useless eyes and cooled before sliding into my hair.  They slipped along the curve of my ears and, in the perfect blackness, the icy sensation was shocking.  Almost overwhelming.  I braced my hands against the lid above me, pushing against the inevitable.  I was never going to be Duo’s husband.  Our life together was always going to be limited to those four months in New York.  To text messages and the occasional phone call.

But, I reminded myself, that was more than I could’ve had if I’d never met him.  How empty my life would have been – how soulless – if the troupe had never gotten graft at that dig in Egypt.  If Lord Maxwell hadn’t brought his son along for a visit.  I never would have read Beowulf or Hamlet.  I never would have played Beethoven on the piano.  Never would have made love.

My life without Duo – it made me ill to even consider it.  So I didn’t.

My head was pounding.  My shoulders throbbed and my palms stung.  I didn’t shy away from the pain so much as I fell into it.  I closed my eyes, _choosing_ the darkness of my own free will.  I had so few choices left, none of which would matter in the long run, but they mattered to _me._

Besides, in the darkness, I didn’t have to be alone.

“Duo,” I breathed.  I imagined we were dossing in the rear of a bakkie parked in a grassy field.  If I opened my eyes, I’d be able to see the stars overhead.  I called up a memory – one of many – of a damp patch of fabric sticking to my shoulder.  Duo’s drool territory.  I conjured up the weight of his head on my arm and the feel of his body heat all along my side.

“Yeah, Tro?” I imagined he answered just as softly.

“I— I don’t know what to say,” I confessed.  I’d never been so lost.

His hand found mine and squeezed tightly.  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m psychic.”

I almost laughed.  “Then you know everything.”

“Yup.  You’ve got no secrets from me, pal.”

My entire being clamped down around the sensation of my heart falling apart.  “So you know what I need to hear.”

He sighed.  I could almost feel his breath against my skin.  He nuzzled my neck.  “Yeah.  I do.”

I waited.

After a long moment, he whispered, “I’m never gonna forget.”

I smiled.

“And I’m gonna be OK,” he promised.  “I’m gonna live.  An’ I’m gonna be happy again.  Because I’m never gonna forget.”

I swallowed thickly.  “Help me remember.”

He did.  Listing one moment after another from Chopin’s Nocturne (Opus 9, Number 2) to shooting at a sail down between the sand dunes.  I remembered an unuttered question: “You never told me what it was you said then.  As you took your third shot.”

“You never asked.”

And now I never would.

He told me about Bostik in Vientiane and makeshift knife belts.  Scooters and dusty roads.  A helicopter soaring over the jungle, our hands clasped and fingers interlocked.  Gogga.  Bamboo tubes filled with sticky rice.  New shoes and silk neckties.

His voice took me back to the house in Colchester and a kiss surrounded by the winter chill on a country lane.  Two hands sharing one pocket.  Christmas Eve in front of a fire and salsa stains on our trousers.  Kisses on the threshold of the apartment in New York.  The state swim championship.  His hair flowing around his bare shoulders.  Coffee in the mornings.  Biscuit dough exploding from a cardboard canister.  His knee pressing against mine and our shins knocking together under a table in a greasy diner.

“Watch out for the Klingons in the ice cream,” I told him.

He chuckled.  “Every time I make Spaghetti-O’s, I’ll think of you.”

I knew he would.  My tears fell hotter, faster, thicker.  “Thank you, Duo.”

“For what, baby?”

I thought of a boy cleaning a rifle under the boughs of a gnarled tree in the Egyptian desert.  “For going out on a limb.”

He kissed my cheek and I turned my head into the touch.  I held onto him, inhaling and savoring his scent slowly, and then exhaling even slower, reluctant to release even that much of him.  My fingers curled into claws, grasping fabric in what must have been a white knuckled grip.  I pretended that it was his doff “I Grouch You!” T-shirt I was clutching.  I pretended that I was just going to sleep.  When I woke, he’d be curled up on his side and I’d be spooning him from behind.  When I woke, we’d be in our bed in New York.  It’d be minutes before our alarm went off and we had to get ready for school.

There’s no need for goodbyes when you’re just going to sleep.

__Shhhh._ _

Duo petted my hair and I hushed.

__Shhhh._   Shh.  Shhhh._

I frowned.  “Duo?”

_Shh._ _Shh.  Shh._

“Duo, what—?”

_Thump!  Thump-thump!_

A voice called out, muffled.  I sat up suddenly.  My head knocked against the lid of the chest with a muted _bang!_

The voice came again.  This time I could just barely make out the words: “He’s alive, sir!”

Ja, I was alive.  But what about Duo?  My hands scrabbled over the inside of the chest, but there was no figment of my imagination in here with me.  Not any longer.  The real Duo was out there somewhere.  At Khushrenada’s mercy.

I checked my watch again.  A grand total of eighteen additional minutes had gone by.  An eternity.

I pounded my fists against the lid and kicked at the walls until I heard the distinctive rattle of latches being loosened. I held my breath and waited.  Was I imagining this as well or—?

A squeal of hinges.  The hiss of dirt sliding over metal.  Cool air.  The glow of daylight.  I flinched as crumbly, damp earth hit me in the face.  A sunbeam seared through my closed eyelids and the ache at the back of my head roared to life.

“Trowa!”

I knew that voice, but he couldn’t be here.  It wasn’t possible.  My heart sank, dived, shattered.  I was still in that fokken chest, but now I was hallucinating.

Hands grabbed my arms and hauled me upright.  I gasped.  My eyes flew open and I gawked at Martins’ beaming grin.  “Up you go, Trowa!” he announced and more fingers curled into my jacket and around my elbows, pulling me out of the dank earth and into a warm embrace.

“Ah, my boy!”

I was slow to wind my arms around him.  We’d never hugged before.  I still wasn’t absolutely sure that this wasn’t all in my head.  “Captain?” I checked.

He sobbed, reaching up to cradle my head as if I were an infant.  “Aweh, Trowa,” he rasped and then inhaled on a shudder.

“Aweh,” I repeated dumbly.  I heard Bryce’s guffaw next and he punched me in the arm, turning back toward the hole where Martins was noisily demanding a hand in hauling himself topside.  Kask leaned down into my field of vision, his grin lopsided.  “Howzit, Trowa?” he greeted, and Wallace mused from somewhere behind me, “Is he gone bossies?”

When Kask waved a broad hand in my face, I klapped it away.  “I’m all right,” I told them.  The statement was true enough.  If this was all a hallucination – and I was becoming increasing less certain that it was – then I’d take it.  My backup was here and I was going after Duo.  I was a merc – always had been and likely always would be in some fashion – and if I was going to die so be it, but I’d go down fighting.  “Where’s Duo?”

A new voice answered: “Buying us time with Khushrenada.”

I spun away from the captain.  “Yuy,” I accused.  Duo’s fan from Japan looked exactly as he had in Laos: denim jacket, T-shirt, two poorly-concealed, holstered pistols.  He nodded once.  Just that.  Smart oke.  If he’d told me he was here out of some sort of sense of camaraderie, I would have broken his neck with my bare hands; I had no use for liars.

“I’m here to destroy the artifact,” he informed me.

“What with?”

He gestured to a case at his feet and waited until I’d given him a nod to go ahead.  He opened it carefully and explained of the small, round device, “Antimatter grenade,” and the long cylindrical dinges beside it, “and launcher.  I just need a clear shot at the key.”

I had no way of guaranteeing he would take it or that the key would be destroyed as promised.  However—  “If you betray Duo…”  I bristled at the very thought and the five mercs standing at my back tensed.  I easily pictured their menacing stares.

Yuy stiffened.  “I understand.”

I turned my attention toward yet another interloper.  “Winner.” 

If he minded the lack of warm welcome, he didn’t let on.  He smiled brightly and returned the acknowledgement with irritating cheer, “Trowa.”  He then angled his chin toward the false gateway beyond.  “We saw Dominic head up that way almost forty minutes ago.  What are our orders?”

 _This one’s dangerous._   My instincts were howling at me not to trust Winner with Duo’s life.  He was just a little too comfortable making me believe I was holding the reins of this situation.  Well, there was one way to make sure he stayed out of my way.  I informed the eight Qatari bodyguards hovering just a step behind him, “Cover our retreat.”

Tense shoulders dropped.  More than one held breath was sighed out quietly.  Winner frowned mightily, but I didn’t have time – _Duo_ didn’t have time – for me to sort him out.  The captain could give me all the details on his involvement later.  For now, what I needed to know was—

“Has the area been reconnoitered?”

The captain gave me the rundown: “Target’s eight hundred meters north-east, on a hill through there.  Plenty of brush for cover.  There’s some kind of monument at the summit.  Stone – two meters by one-point-five – in the center of a small clearing, ten meters in diameter.”

It was fairly straight-forward, then.  “Surround and secure Duo by whatever means necessary.”  I turned toward Yuy, “Once we have him, you’ll be clear to take out the key.”

“I’ll need a clear path to get within firing range – eight meters.”

“You’ll have it.”

The captain passed me a pistol.  I checked the safety and confirmed that the clip was full and first bullet chambered before accepting a holster from Kask and buckling it to my waist.  “Let’s—”

I didn’t have a chance to give the order to move out.  At that precise moment, a pulse throbbed through the forest.  It pulled at me as if it had its own gravity.  Rather than making our eardrums thrum and ache, like a shockwave would have, it seemed to suck all the air out of the area.  For an instant, the world went flat.  I was completely deaf.  My heart skipped a beat like I’d been zapped with an electrical current.

Then it reversed.  I could hear my own quick breaths.  Martins muttered a reverent, “My God.”  The captain stepped forward.  One of Winner’s guards muttered something in what was probably Arabic, but all of us were scheming the same thing: _What the bugger and fuck was that?_   I’d learned to fear the sound of a gunshot, but I had no reckoning of what _that_ had been.  It terrified me – strummed some ancient, instinctual horror – and my lover was at the source of it.

“Duo,” I choked out.  A hand grasped my arm and the captain held out a familiar-looking knife.  My fingers curled around the handle and I recognized the fit of my old hunting blade.  I started for the moss-covered trees along the southeast side of the trail.  The captain took my left flank and Martins my right.

The incline was the exact opposite of the steep steps I’d encountered in Laos, but for some reason all I could think of was that stone temple, crouching on the stairs beneath the roof listening to Khushrenada’s men preparing to break through the front door, telling Duo why his father might not have complete use of his hands.  Nails-knuckles-wrists Khushrenada had called it and I had never hated a man more.

 _Nooit._  I could not think about that now.  Rage would only cloud my judgment.  If I allowed myself to feel anything, it would be fear for Duo.  A little fear was healthy; it would keep you alive.  It would keep your chinas alive.

With each step, I focused on moving more silently than I had before.  Perhaps that was what made it possible for me to hear Khushrenada long before he came within visual range.

“—the weapon out?”

And then that strange, sucking silence returned.  I gritted my teeth, waited it out, and was rewarded a few seconds later with a few words from Chang, “—not my field of—”

I frowned.  What had they opened and why were their voices tuning in and out like FM radio waves?

“—Lord Maxwell?”

I held my breath, desperate to hear his voice, hoping he was still alive—

“—hell makes you think—any idea?”

Gasping, I propelled myself even more carefully through the dense foliage.  Duo was alive and stroppy as hell.  _Thank you, God._

Someone must have said something during the following sound-shift, because the next voice I heard was once again Duo’s.  “—mom’s notes didn’t say—”

“—make a good guess.  You—genius, after all.”

I pulled myself up an earthen ledge, soundlessly swinging my legs up and over a moss-covered snarl of roots.  There I paused and blinked.  Across the few remaining meters separating me from the small shrine at the top of the rise, I could see a bright, flickering light arcing and spinning like car headlights on a sudden, sharp curve in a mountain road.

Looking left and right, I met confused, side-long glances from both the captain and Martins, confirming that we were all hearing and seeing the same strange phenomenon.  I moved forward on my belly, digging my elbows into damp earth and deadfall-blanketed rocks.  The pace was slow enough to destroy my sanity, but I had to assume that they could hear our approach.  Sound came and went like a wind swirling around us, but the forest itself was utterly still.

I’d never been so uncertain of a potential conflict.  What was I crawling toward?  Was there anything I’d be able to do for Duo?  How was I going to get him away from Khushrenada?  And assuming I could successfully extract him from this situation, for how long could I keep him safe?  Even if Yuy destroyed that fokken key, would that be the end of it?  Or would Khushrenada be twice as determined to get his pound of flesh in exchange?

I tightened my grip around the hunting knife in my grasp.  I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, but it was time to act, to react, to counter.  It was time to fight the only way I knew how.   I shrugged my way through the final tangle of brush and got my first look at what we were up against.

The sight of it took my breath away.

The gateway was real.  In the center of a massive, grey stone, the source of the flickering light – over a meter in diameter – swirled like a hurricane turned on its side, spinning faster than my eyes could track.

“—Trowa!”

I froze.  My gaze leapt toward Duo, but he wasn’t looking at me.  He wasn’t even turned in my general direction.  He was shouting at Khushrenada and the portal had devoured all his words with the exception of the last.  His lips moved again, but there was no sound this time.  Just beyond where he stood, the racing lights stopped, pulsed, and suddenly changed direction.

Khushrenada’s lips moved and I could hear—“After I get the weapon, Lord Maxwell, you’ll be free to see to him.”

“No, Goddamn it!” he snarled.  “It’s not my fault you don’t know what the fuck to do with this thing.  I’m done!”

He lurched toward the path and the three nearest men lunged after him.  Four others lifted their rifles.  He dodged the outstretched hands, but I knew we had to move before shots were inevitably fired.  I caught the captain’s gaze and Martins’, then signed a brief countdown which they swiftly synched with the men further out beyond my line of sight.

_Three… two… one!_

I launched at the closest of the three men in pursuit of my lover, tackling the oke into a slight hollow on the other side of the path.  We crashed into the moss and rocks.  He struggled under my weight, wriggling too much for me to risk slicing his throat without catching my own hand or arm in the process.  I punched him in the side of the head with the handle of my knife, then rolled to the side and dived hastily behind a tree.  Shots were fired in my wake.  Out of the corner of my eye, the man I’d taken down jerked twice and then lay still.

I could hear the sound of bodies colliding nearby.  Using the tree trunk, I swung myself around, keeping low and knife at the ready, and swept the hilltop with my gaze.  Khushrenada and Chang had disappeared – taken cover.  One man lay on the top, earthen step.  Knocked out or dead.  Another was engaged in close combat with Bryce, who grinned through his scraggly, greying beard and I knew that fight would be over in moments.  The captain was just throwing another merc to the ground.  Martins, Kask, Wallace – all grappling with an opponent apiece.

I’d left Duo with two.  It was time for me to rectify that.

Just as he viciously kicked one oke between the legs and turned his attention to the other, grunting as the man’s fist connected with his side, I leapt onto the first, clamping a fist into his hair and drawing his head back.  This time, I encountered no impediment to using my knife.  He gargled out a final breath and I twisted around, ready to come between Duo and his third opponent.

Instead, I found the merc on his knees with a rope of braided hair wrapped around his throat.  He struggled wildly and Duo’s hands were already white-knuckled with the strength of his grip.  I didn’t doubt that I could let this play out and Duo would be the victor, but we didn’t have the time.  Khushrenada would rally his remaining men if we didn’t blend back into the forest swiftly.

My knife slid into the man’s belly and raced upward until it caught on his sternum.  Hands wet with steaming blood, I yanked the blade free, grabbed Duo by the shoulder, and hauled him into the safety of the trees.

Pressing him down against the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, I peered left and right.  The area was eerily silent now, but I could see the captain – gore splattered but seemingly all in one piece – crouching behind a tangle of brush.  On my other side, I spotted not Martins but Bryce crouched down in a small hallow for cover, wincing as he swiftly tended to a cut on his right arm.  I signed to them and they signed back: no casualties.  Our strategy to take Khushrenada’s mercs by surprise had worked.  Well, to a certain extent.  Nine men were down, but I remembered there being a dozen.  We had at three more adversaries not including Khushrenada himself and the clearing was now completely empty.

A fisted hand in my shirt collar drew my attention down toward the warm, panting body I was crouched over.

“Am I dead?” Duo breathed in wonder.

I smiled.  “No, bokkie.  I’m the one who’s come back to life.”

“How—?” he marveled.

I kissed him on his slack-jawed lips.  “You make it through this alive, and I’ll tell you.  Deal?”

He nodded, the stunned look fading from his eyes and being replaced by a delighted sparkle.  “Deal.”

“Three more mercs, Chang, and Khushrenada,” I warned him, listing our obstacles.  “And Yuy’s here.”

Duo grinned.  “He bring his game?”

“Some befokken Star Trek grenade launcher.”

“Hot damn!  Is it distraction time?”

I marveled at how quickly he was able to follow our slapdash plan.  “Ja.”

“Okie dokie.  Don’t worry, babe.  I got this.”  He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a very dated, very familiar iPod.  Grinning, he turned it on and then leaned around our tree and _tossed_ it into the clearing.  We heard it bounce and clatter across the mossy ground.  Then Duo threw back his head and shouted, “You know what that is, Khushy?  It’s you gettin’ _played,_ man.  _Played!”_

I didn’t understand what the hell he was on about, but— “Hush.  They’ll track us.”

He mumbled back, “Then let’s hope Yuy bazookas that thing sooner rather than later.”

I signaled for the captain and Bryce to fall back.  They didn’t look happy about it, but they signed my orders on to the others concealed in the brush.  If Khushrenada’s mercs hunted in a team, the troupe could be easily overwhelmed fanned out like they all were.  It was smarter to regroup, keep me and Duo in their sights, and wait for the mercs to hunt us down.  Then the odds would favor us.

Suddenly, Duo burst into song, startling me, “All the old paintings on the tomb, they do the sand dance, doncha know?”

My frown twitched into a scowl.  I remembered those words.  He’d written them in the floor of the tomb in Egypt.

He blithely continued, “All the Japanese with their yen, the party boys call the Kremlin.  And the Chinese know, oo-way-oo, they walk a line like an Egyptian— Hey, if you guys know this one sing along!” he hollered, gripping my upper arm so tight I knew he had to be aware of the bull’s eye he was painting on us.  “Foreign types with their hookah pipes say, ‘Way-oo way-oo oo-way-eo-way-ooo!’ Walk like an Egyptian…”

The captain and the others were out here with us, but I couldn’t see them.  Good.  If I didn’t know where they were, then I wouldn’t be able to give away their position.

“Hey, Khushy, here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know.  My mom left more than a scribbled message on a temple wall for me in Laos.  She left me the key – the real key – to opening this fucking gateway.  Wanna know what it is?”  He laughed loudly.  “Well, duh, I mean of course you wanna know what it is.  Too bad it wasn’t what I told ya!”  He sang, “Slide your feet up street, bend your back, shift your arm, then you pull it back!”  Another bark of laughter.  If not for the hard gleam in his eyes, I would have worried about his sanity.  “Classic dance move, man.  Walk like an Egyptian.  You should’ve done the opposite of what I told ya to do with that key, ‘cuz then you’d be king of the whole damn universe right now instead of squatting behind a tree in the middle of bum-fuck Japan!”

I blinked at him.  Duo winked at me.  “If you make it through this alive, I’ll fill ya in.  Deal?”

“Deal,” I promised.

I expected him to start shouting or singing again, but he drummed his fingers against my arm and waited.  A moment later, I heard Khushrenada call out, “Well played, Lord Maxwell.”

Duo smirked.

“Now I’ll ask once and once only, how do we reset the gateway so that—”

_Ka-thunk!  Whoosh!_

As Yuy’s grenade whistled through the air, I wrapped an arm around Duo and pulled both of us tighter against the tree and down into the ground.

_BOOM!_

This time there was a shockwave.  It shook the tree, ruffled my hair, and pressed against my clothes.  I kept my eyes shut and my face buried in Duo’s neck for good measure and waited for my eardrums to either burst or start working again.  A heartbeat, then another, and a third and I still wasn’t sure if the rushing in my ears was the sound of my own racing blood or something more sinister.

I shakily leaned back and peered around the edge of our shelter toward the clearing.  The stone monument that the captain had described and I’d glimpsed behind the whirling storm of light was gone.  The ground was churned up and scorched black.  A small crater now sat in the center of the clearing and bits of grey stone littered the area.  In the center of that earthy depression swirled an even larger circle of pulsing lights.  And with every passing second, it only increased in size.

What the bugger and fuck was happening here?

“Shit,” Duo hissed, having wiggled up until the crown of his head bumped my chin.  Splinters of bark stuck in his tresses scratched my jaw.  “The antimatter only got the gateway.  Now the portal’s not contained.”  I turned in time to watch his scowl deepen.  “Goddamn it, how can that have hap—oh.  _Shit.”_

“What?” I pressed.

“The _portal_ is made of antimatter,” Duo explained in a distracted tone.  “That must be why my mom asked the OJs for help.  Annihilation.  Polar opposite.  Unstoppable.  Fuck!”

“Unstoppable?” I parroted.  I was still trying to keep an eye out for our enemies who were undoubtedly closing in, but the fury and terror in Duo’s tone was unsettling me.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

I tensed at the look on his face, the angle of his jaw and the hardness in his eyes.  The last time I’d seen him look like this, we’d been seated in a London cathedral, enduring his father’s funeral service.

“Antimatter, matter… positive, negative…” he murmured to himself.  “Myths and ancients… monuments and statues… temples and tombs…”  He went completely still.  “Altars—!”  He turned toward me and braced himself on my shoulders.  “Where are the Bartons?  We’ve gotta get outta here.  _Now.”_

My heart rocketed into the back of my throat.  I spun around to survey the forest, lifted my fingers to my lips to whistle shrilly – our uncontested signal for falling back – and in that instant of distraction Duo slipped around me, past me, and vaulted over the tangle of roots.  I whipped back around.  Duo’s bouncing rope of brown hair wasn’t moving _down_ the slope toward safety but racing _toward_ the silently pulsing gateway and the man now standing in front of it. 

Behind me and from each flank, I heard the sound of gunshots – Khushrenada’s remaining men were laying down cover fire, cutting me and Duo off from the rest of my troupe.  There was no time to curse, no time to go gavtol, no time for prayer.  I glimpsed Duo’s smile – a mask of bloodlust and death – and forgot to breathe.

My lover was on a collision course with Treize Khushrenada. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I so ended it THERE. But let's recap:  
> We know the Bartons pulled back but there are now Khushy's mercs preventing them from getting to Trowa and Duo. Duo's on a suicide mission. Khushrenada is ALL IN and CALLING IT. Yuy is... somewhere. Chang is... somewhere. And Winner et. al. ...er, well, I guess we'll find out how this goes down in the next chapter. (^_~)


	25. The Quest, Part 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Language, Tomb-Raider-type craziness, and... did I mention LANGUAGE?  
> Theme music: "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons
> 
> Duo POV

"Myths and ancients… monuments and statues… temples and tombs… altars and…"

Altars! Of course!

I am such an idiot. It was so obvious. How had I not seen this? Chang had. He'd damn well glared at it – gotten down on his knees and fondled it! – the stone ledge at the base of the statue of Buddha – too tall to be a step and too low to be a table – was an  _altar._  And what did ancient people do with altars?

Oh yeah, that's right: sacrifices.

It was the only way to close the portal. Somebody had to chuck a sacrifice into it – enough matter to set off a chain reaction in the swirling antimatter. I didn't really know how much matter that would be, but I was willing to bet that my good buddy Khushrenada would be the perfect size. All I had to do was draw him out into the open and get close enough to shove him into the portal.

The bad news was the explosion was probably gonna take me out, too. If the tiny speck of antimatter in Yuy's "Star Trek" grenade – and how much did I love Trowa for coming up with that? – had caused a freakin' crater and obliterated a massive block of metal-infused-stone, then a collision between a 170-pound dude and the source of the antimatter itself was gonna be cataclysmic.

I closed my eyes as Trowa exhaled against my scalp, as the sound of distant gunfire punctured the unending whoosh of the swirling gateway. There was no time to call for backup. There was no backup; the Bartons were cut off from us. Fine. Whatever. It didn't matter. I knew what I had to do.

_Keep him safe. Keep everyone safe._

And I knew he wasn't gonna like it, but it was time to either shit or get off the pot, as they say. I twisted around and grabbed Trowa's shoulders. It took everything I had in me to keep myself from yanking him close, wrapping myself around him and never,  _ever_ letting go.

_Don't think about what you've gotta do. Just get it done._

OK, then.

"Where are the Bartons?" I hollered. The portal no longer alternately sucked up and spat out sound waves. Placing the halves of the key in the opposite formation had been like trying to open a door by ripping at its hinges instead of picking the lock. I'd hoped that, given enough time, it would have simply collapsed in on itself. It was a moot point now that the whole damn framework had been blasted to hell. The unrestrained portal spun and shone seamlessly. I guess that meant it was stable now. Stable and ready for me to kick some Khushrenada into it. It almost killed me to say it, but I knew Trowa wouldn't move unless I told him, "We've gotta get outta here. Now!"

 _We._  There was no "we." Couldn't be. The glass ring burned against my skin. Partners: I'd promised him that was the end game. I was about to break that promise, but I couldn't bring myself to take off the ring he'd slid onto my finger  _"so you don't forget to say yes."_  Maybe a part of me was hoping I'd make it through this. That there'd be a miracle of some kind.

_There are no miracles. Only death._

When Trowa lifted his hands to his mouth and drew in a deep breath to give a sharp whistle, I squiggled out from between him and the tree, scrambled up and over the tangle of roots, and started running. Khushrenada was already waiting for me, standing as proud and as arrogant as you please in the middle of the clearing between me and the thing my mom and Solo had given their lives to protect. Now it was his turn.

_Time to die, Khushy._

I heard Trowa's shout, but it came too late to be more than a speed bump in my momentum. I was beyond his reach and just moments away from slamming into my target.

And then Khushrenada shifted – no, he didn't shift. Someone else moved out from his shadow.

Chang.

"Oh, fuck," I muttered and brought my arms up just as the guy attacked with a flying kick. I dropped low, swept out with my arm, trying to push him out of the way. Still, there was no way I could get him clear of the big boom that was coming and the longer I dicked around, the closer Trowa would get!

"Fuck off!" I snarled at the guy. My fist connected with his cheek, but my second punch missed and, leaning into it as I was, there was nothing I could do to avoid stumbling.

Chang's hand clamped around my wrist and I knew exactly what kind of arm-bend was coming. I slithered around, flowing with his shifting weight and came back around swinging. He ducked. I angled my elbow down, slamming it into his collarbone. He kicked at my knee and I grabbed for whatever I could hold onto. I'm not proud of the fact that his silky ponytail ended up in my fist and yes, dammit, I pulled for all I was worth as I kneed him in the belly. Then the heel of his hand erupted upward between us on a direct course for my chin.

One shot and it was all over.

I don't remember the impact – only blank white exploding behind my eyes – and I sure as hell didn't give my legs permission to fold under me, but when I blinked, falling back into my own head as time – seconds or epochs – swirled around me, I was in a headlock and staring across the clearing at Trowa.

I scrambled for the arms holding me and choked out a single word, "No!"

_Get out of here! Go!_

Of course he didn't. Wouldn't. Couldn't.

"Weapons on the ground, Mr. Barton," Khushrenada instructed calmly.

Trowa's gaze reached across the distance and found mine. Oh, God. I did not want him to surrender. Khushrenada would only use him to get me to deliver his fucking mystical weapon on a damn silver platter. But I couldn't just let him be shot, either.

I lurched to my feet and suddenly the pistol that had been aimed at my lover was now pointing at my forehead. Pointing at my forehead and I just didn't give a damn. I snarled through gritted teeth as I twisted in Chang's grasp.

_Bring it on, you gutless—!_

Khushrenada's eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched. It looked like I was gonna be eating a bullet for lunch.

_Crack!_

I jerked, at first with surprise, wondering if Trowa'd fired that shot. Or the Bartons. Or Heero double-pistol-action Yuy. Gaping at Khushrenada's looming face, I fell with a bone-jarring thud to the ground. I stared, but no bullet hole appeared between the fucker's eyes. No, Khushrenada wasn't the one who'd been shot.

I had that honor.

"Ahhhh!" It wasn't a very manly scream but getting shot in the leg fucking  _burns._

I figured out I was free – Chang had let me collapse like a sack of laundry – an instant before the guy turned toward his boss and, quick as a lightning strike, spun around and hit the bastard square in the chest with a roundhouse kick that would have made Bruce Lee shed tears of joy at its utter perfection.

"For Meiran!" Chang screamed.

Khushrenada's arms flailed as he stumbled back one step, two. Gritting my teeth through the fire eating away at my leg from the inside out, I twisted my lower body, coming close enough to kick the sonuvabitch's supporting leg out from under him and then—

_Crack!_

His chest jerked and the motion rippled out through each of his limbs. A small, black hole appeared in the center of his fucking pastel necktie. The gun in his hand tumbled through the air and I watched as the man who would have taken away every single, solitary person I cared about crashed into the surface of the portal.

Oh, shit. Here we go—!

But then a weight was crashing down on me, a shadow falling over my eyes and an arm tucking my head into a familiar vest. I sobbed from the pain of my leg being jarred, but I didn't stop watching, not until every last part of Treize Khushrenada was engulfed by light. In that moment, Chang joined our pile, blocking my view of the eruption as light just obliterated the universe.

In silence. And, yeah, I'll admit to being disappointed. I'd expected more, uh,  _bang._ But there was nuthin'. Jesus, you could hear a damn pin drop. And the shockwave I was all braced for? That didn't happen, either.

"What the hell?" I bitched, breathlessly. Was I dead? Were we all dead? There was an elbow poking me in the left kidney. My nose was smashed into a damp, musty armpit. If this was death, it kinda sucked.

But it wasn't. We were inexplicably alive.

It took forever for the flashing, retina-searing light to fade and the other two guys in our football tackle to give me enough space to get a decent lungful of air.

Of course, once I did—"Fuck! Ow! Goddamn it!"

"I'm sorry," Trowa rasped, voice raw and face utterly naked. "I'm so sorry, bokkie."

"This hurts," I informed him.

"I know."

Yeah, he sure did.

Yuy entered my line of sight, nodded to Trowa and went to kneel next to Chang who was unbuttoning his jacket and staring at my bloody pants. I hissed as Yuy started poking at the leg with the bullet hole in it.

"Nice shot, Barton," Yuy assessed and I had no freaking clue what he was talking about until Trowa swallowed thickly, his hands convulsing in the folds of my shirt. I gawked at the guilty look on my lover's face.

He whispered in a rush, "Khushrenada was about to shoot you between the eyes and you were standing between me and him, so I—"

"Hold up. This was  _you?"_  I squeaked.

"It was all I could think of."

"Jesus  _fuck,_ Trowa!" I couldn't deal with this right now, so I aimed my ire elsewhere. "Goddamn it are you trying to squeeze the bullet out with you bare fucking hands, Yuy?"

Yuy ignored me, pressing down harder on the wound, and I was this close to howling.

"Here," Trowa crooned. "Look toward my eyes. Tell me how much you want to donner me black and blue."

"Gah!" I managed and squeezed my eyes shut. Too bad that only made the pain worse.

"We'll get you to hospital just now. Keep your eyes on me."

 _Jesus!_  Trowa had fuckin' shot me?

_And yet you'd been yea close to **tackling**  Khushrenada into the portal?_

I jerked my head to the side in denial but both were true. Trowa hadn't just saved my life. He'd saved me from my own stupid self. I shook my head harder and Trowa responded to my token struggle by saying shakily, "I hate Khushrenada for making me do that and I will get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness after you're safe. I swear."

Having said much the same to him only a day and a half before on a sandy tarmac in Egypt, I believed him. I twisted my fingers into the slack in his vest and just held the hell on.

"Stay with me, bokkie."

I pressed my face into his shoulder as the impossible happened – even  _more_ pressure came down on my thigh – and I screamed through my teeth. I glanced down in time to see Chang tightly knotting his jacket around my leg where Yuy's hands had been mercilessly squeezing. Unfortunately, that tiny shift in my attention was almost enough to make my head spin off my shoulders in dizziness.

"No exit wound," Yuy assessed before Chang pinned me with a merciless, black stare and informed everyone within earshot, "You'll live."

Oh, well, that was good news. Great. Wonderful. Wasn't this just the most fun double-date ever?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Yuy suddenly pivot toward the east. Chang's head snapped around and he glared in the same direction. Beneath my hands, Trowa's shoulders stiffened and his arms tightened around my chest. Oh, shit, now what? I braced myself, my mind racing in lopsided circles trying to figure out how I was gonna fight whatever was coming at us this time.

That was when I heard it over the pounding of my head and the wheezing of my panicked breaths, when I felt it vibrate beneath my tailbone and along my throbbing leg: the low, hungry rumble and teeth-rattling shift of geological indigestion.

"Oh, fuck no," I objected, but my protest was lost in the booming snarl of a massive volcano.

Mount Fuji was erupting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fanart alert! To date, the generous and talented Tanuki02 has given us three marvelous sketches of Tomb Raiders!
> 
> "glissandos and chords" >> http://tanuki02.deviantart.com/art/glissandos-and-chords-349245567  
> "though I walk thought the shadow" >> http://tanuki02.deviantart.com/art/though-I-walk-through-the-shadow-359893336  
> And the latest -- "wherever" >> http://tanuki02.deviantart.com/art/wherever-526331591


	26. The Quest, Part 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trowa POV
> 
> Theme music: "For a Friend" by Jason Mraz

It was doubtful that Duo would ever remember much of our extraction from that cursed forest, but that was just as well.  I would recall every terrifying moment of it for the both of us. 

_“Chang!  Help me get him up!  Yuy, get under his arm.”_

I closed my eyes, once again feeling Duo’s strangle hold on my shoulders while the ground shook and the sky darkened.  My ears were still ringing with the memory of the crack-crack-crack of splitting rock as the peaceful, snow-covered slopes of the mountain fractured and a beast made of molten rock and poisonous gas hatched, bursting from its cocoon.  Every time my tired eyes unfocused, I was suddenly back on that trail, navigating those low, earthen steps with Duo pressed between Yuy and myself, his head lolling against my shoulder in between bouts of vomiting.  I probably would have heard him moan out a warning before each if the air hadn’t been so completely filled with an unending chorus of booming rumbles.  The hiss of ash raining down against green foliage had propelled both Yuy and myself to move as fast as Duo could manage to swing his good leg between us until—

_“Yoh, Trowa!”_

_“Aw, shit.  We got a man hit here, Captain.”_

_“Trowa!  This way to the bakkies.”_

_“Khushrenada’s mercs?”_

_“Don’t know.  Don’t care.  Let’s **move!”**_

We had.  Winner and his men had come through on our extraction.  The bakkies had been waiting with engines running when we’d burst out of the forest.

_“Duo?  Duo!  What happened?”_

_“He’s been shot.”_

_“But—!”_

_“Move, Winner.  Yuy, you’re riding with us.  Keep the pressure on his leg.”_

The ride toward civilization had taken a bloody eternity.

“We’re nearly there,” I’d crooned as he’d snapped his teeth closed on my grungy collar, a high-pitched whine eking out of his throat and tears sliding down his cheeks.

Ripping his mouth away from my shirt, he’d argued, “No we’re not, damn it!  Stop getting my hopes up!”

I’d had to bite back a grin.  “Sorry, bokkie.”

“Jesus, Tro.  The guys can totally hear you callin’ me that.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Fuck no.”

“Then they can deal with it.”  I’d pushed his sweat-soaked bangs away from his too pale face, fretting over his clammy skin as he’d clutched at my forearms.  Duo had spent the hour-long ride leaning back against my chest with his leg in Yuy’s lap, wincing in time with every pothole or crack in the road.  He’d cursed and struggled and I’d held him tightly, loving him more than I ever had before.  When the hospital staff had pulled him from my arms, they’d taken my heart and soul away on that gurney.  The clatter of the wheels on concrete was like a scourge tearing the flesh from my bones.

“Hey,” Martins called when I lunged for the open doorway.  “Leave your gear.  I’ll deal with it.”

My gear.  Right.  The police would be called and they’d have questions.  It’d be best if I didn’t give them any incriminating evidence as well.  I dumped my pistol, holster, and knife on the seat and then sprinted for the hospital entrance.  I knew I’d have to assess myself for injuries but not before I was sure Duo was getting immediate care.  Winner was already speaking with a clerk at the admitting desk.  I didn’t understand a word of Japanese, but I hovered nonetheless.  A nurse edged into my line of sight and asked me some fokken question or other, gesturing delicately to my bloody hands and clothing.  I stared at her blankly.

“She wants to know if you need to see a doctor,” Winner translated.

“I’m fine.”

Bryce wasn’t, though, and I watched him being escorted to an examination room.  The cut on his arm likely wanted stitching.

“Time to get cleaned up, Trowa,” the captain said, steering me toward the nearest loo, and ten minutes later, I was.

No matter my personal opinion of Quatre Raberba Winner, he and his men had executed their assigned task adequately: we were all here in hospital, safe.  Either getting treatment or bracing ourselves on chairs in the lounge, waiting for news on Duo.  The telly showed pictures of Mount Fuji.  There were helicopters and sirens.  The climbing season hadn’t started yet, but there were still people out there at resorts and on hiking trails in the woods.

People like Khushrenada’s mercs.  How many bodies would be found?  None by the look of things.  A wide swath of lava was oozing down the slopes, heading directly for Aokigahara.  The entire site would soon be under at least a meter of volcanic sediment.  Everything – the gateway, the key, the terror – was all gone.  Just like that.

I shifted away from the telly and stared at the cream-colored walls, the pastel upholstery, the pale carpet tiles under my muddy boots.  I laced my fingers together and squeezed until I heard one of my knuckles crack. 

Someone tapped my shoulder and I flinched back before looking up and into the captain’s face.  “Let’s find the cooldrinks in this place.”

I shook my head.

He waved a mobile phone at me.  “Wallace’ll call when they have word on your man.  C’mon, Trowa.”

Blowing out a breath, I pushed myself upright and followed his lead out of the room.  I could feel the attention of the others – not just Wallace and Kask but Winner and the two bodyguards  who sat on either side of him as well.  I didn’t have the energy to try to guess what they were scheming.

We found a quiet hallway and the captain’s steps slowed.  “Report,” he said quietly.

“You heard Duo provoking Khushrenada?”

He nodded.

“It drew him out in the open, right in front of the—”  I hesitated over naming the phenomenon in the woods.  The words stuck in my throat.

The captain understood.  “Then what?”

“Duo went after him, but Chang was there.  They fought.  I didn’t have a clear shot.  Chang got Duo pinned and then Khushrenada—”  I stopped again to reorient myself.  I knew these reports were important.  It was important to get the sequence of events straight in your own head, to find peace with them so you could roll out of your bunk the next morning, look yourself in the eye in the mirror while shaving, and then head out for another day of work.  Reports were necessary.  That didn’t make what I was about to say any easier to stomach.  “He held a gun on me, told me to drop my weapon.  Then Duo got some leverage and stood up.  Surprised Khushrenada.  He turned the gun on him.  I panicked.”

“You shot Duo.”

I stared hard at the closed door we were strolling past.  “Ja.”  I’d needed a clear shot at Khushrenada and, with Duo on the ground, that was exactly what I’d gotten.

“There was a second shot,” the captain prodded; I put the memory of the first behind me.

“Chang kicked him – Khushrenada – toward the—”  Again, no words came to me to describe the portal.  Even thinking the word itself left a bad taste in my mouth.  I couldn’t admit to the reality of it here in a hospital corridor under fluorescent lights.  I cleared my throat.  “When Duo kicked at Khushrenada’s feet, I realized they wanted him to fall backward into it.  I fired.”

The captain waited a moment before nodding once.  “Then?”

“There was so much light, like an explosion but no sound.  No shockwave.  And Khushrenada was gone.  The whole—everything was just gone.”

We walked a bit more.  “You’re lucky Winner contacted us.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t _you?”_

I closed my eyes on a sigh.  I didn’t tell him what he already knew: I hadn’t known were Duo was headed at first; I hadn’t had much in the way of funds.  I told him the truth, “Duo’s father died on my watch.  I wanted all of you safe.”

“Ah, my boy,” the captain sighed, looping a beefy arm over my shoulders.  His large hand palmed my scalp and gently ruffled my hair.  I just gave in and let him do it.  “Khushrenada owned our contract,” he eventually said and I stiffened.  “This was our fight, too,” he assured me with a tired smile.

“Barton.”

We both turned.  Yuy stood at the end of the hall, hands no longer covered in my lover’s blood.

“There’s something you need to see.”  He nodded for us to follow him and then disappeared behind one of the closed doors.

The captain and I entered a smaller, more private waiting room and spotted Chang hunched over a laptop screen.  Heero gestured us closer and I warily took the seat beside Chang’s.  I waited for him to aim his habitual scowl at me, but he didn’t.  I turned my attention toward the low table and the computer balanced atop an assortment of Japanese fashion magazines.

“Who is that?” I asked quietly as I absorbed the scene on the laptop monitor.  A very pregnant woman was lying in a hospital bed somewhere.  Sunlight streamed in through the window, glinting off of the oxygen feed and IV lines.  Her belly shifted visibly, but she didn’t even twitch in response.

I’d almost given up on getting a response when Chang told me, “Meiran.  My wife.  And our daughter.”

I didn’t apologize for asking, and I still didn’t know why I was here.  I glanced at the clock and decided I could spare five minutes and then I was getting back to the waiting room.

Chang volunteered, “She was dizzy and having headaches for days, but she was too stubborn to go to the hospital.  She passed out in the bath and hasn’t woken since.”  He paused, glared at something beyond the image on the screen.  “Khushrenada owns the hospital.  If I didn’t assist him with his _quest,”_ Chang sneered the word and forced his next words out in a tight voice, “I would have lost our daughter.  Meiran was only three months pregnant when the aneurism—”

Yuy stepped forward and placed a hand on Chang’s shoulder.

“You know each other,” I observed.

“University,” Yuy answered.  “Under-graduate school in Tokyo.  We were dorm neighbors.”

I worked through that quickly and then remembered Yuy’s two pistols and his assignment to get close enough to destroy he gateway.  “Did you have a clear shot to Khushrenada?  Just before it collapsed?”

“No.”

I challenged him with a look.  By way of reply, he transferred his stare to Chang and with that one motion it was clear that even if Yuy’d had a shot, he wouldn’t have taken it.  He believed that Chang had had every right to participate the demise of the man who was threatening his family.  Perhaps that was true.  But in the real world, that’s how the “bad dudes steal your lunch money” – as Duo would say.  The realization that Duo and I saw eye to eye on the unfairness of life startled me.  It was true that I used weapons where Duo used charm, but on the necessity of using them against threats we were in perfect agreement.

I would point this out to Duo later.  At the moment, I still had words for Chang: “You didn’t attack Khushrenada at the first opportunity,” I accused.

“Khushrenada is an accomplished martial artist.  I needed the element of surprise.”

I glared at him.

His jaw muscles flexed and finally I earned myself a glower.  “He was anticipating Maxwell’s attack and would have used it against him – thrown him into the portal.  Khushrenada was convinced that it needed a sacrifice before it would unleash its true power.”

And Chang had stepped between them, equally determined that Khushrenada be denied the very thing he sought.

Chang continued, “Finally, at the sound of the gunshot and Maxwell’s collapse, he forgot that he didn’t trust me.”

I nodded and his gaze slid back toward the screen.  I didn’t like it, but it was the truth.  I knew enough about strategy to appreciate the element of surprise and its effect on the animal instincts that govern us all.   Still—

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Khushrenada was dangerous,” Yuy summarized.

Chang added, “He had your troupe on a very short leash and you didn’t even know it.”

I glanced at the captain, but his attention was on Chang.  He said, “You’re the inside man.”

“Yes.”

“He phoned a few weeks ago,” the captain explained to me.  “Told us to be ready.  That you’d need backup.”

Chang nodded and I felt my lingering hostility toward him evaporate.  I _had_ needed backup.  Both Duo and I had.  “Maxwell may be foolish,” Chang continued, “but his fears were real.  Khushrenada had every intention of using you to get what he wanted.  You and Maxwell were never supposed to survive.”

That much had already been made abundantly clear to me.

After a beat of silence, Yuy concluded, “But you did.”

And that was the most important thing.  I’d have to remember that when the physicians were done with Duo and I was permitted to see him.  I was still angry with him for leaving me behind, but Khushrenada’s words from the caverns suddenly made sense now.

_“You just left him in New York even though he knew where to find the other half of the key?  And here, all this time, I’d assumed he didn’t know a thing.  Astounding.”_

Had that been the game?  Duo had tried to keep me safe in my own ignorance?  But there’d been no guarantee that Khushrenada would have been happy to leave me in New York, so how…?

I shook my head.  I could organize men, reconnoiter an area, plan, and implement an attack; I knew strategy, but this was well beyond my ken.  I abandoned trying to untangle Duo’s knotted logic.  Later.  There would be time later.  We would make time.

“Best wishes for the birth of your daughter,” I told Chang.  To Yuy, I said, “Back to your research?”

“Ah.  Soon.”

I stretched out a hand and shook with each of them.  I still didn’t trust either of them completely, but they had done me and Duo more than one favor.  We owed them our thanks at the very least.

I walked out the door with the captain at my heels.  We didn’t speak again even when we stopped at a cooldrink machine.  The captain fed yen into the thing and I punched out a dozen cans.  Winner looked surprised when I held out a selection of three for him and the two men who’d accompanied him.  He didn’t ask if this meant I now considered him a friend.  That was just as well.  I still didn’t know.

We sat.  We sipped our cooldrinks.  We stared at the telly.  We greeted Bryce when he rejoined us, arm bandaged neatly.

“Ain’t you learned not to show off your scars yet?” Martins complained.  At some point during my debriefing, he’d parked the bakkie, finished cleaning up our gear, and then found his way here.  My lips slanted into a wry grin in anticipation of the tuning that was coming.

“Chicks dig scars.”

“Not on your leathery hide.”

“Hah!  You’re just jealous ‘cuz you ain’t got a new one to show sweet Miss Maintenance.”

“Nooo, I haven’t got a new scar because, unlike some, I’m actually good at what I do.”

I tuned them out, turning my head toward the door, holding my breath with every sound of approaching footsteps, and then looking away when they inevitably passed us by… until someone actually stopped in the doorway and announced quietly, “Mak’suweru-sama no gokazoku irasshaimasu ka?”

I blinked at the nurse.  Just as Winner surged to his feet, I made the connection between “Mak’suweru” and “Maxwell.”  I leapt up and spoke before Winner could open his mouth.  “Yes.  How is he?”

The nurse hesitated.

“Mak’suweru-san no goshujin desu,” Quatre interjected, gesturing to me.  “Trowa Barton.”

The nurse startled.  I swung my attention back to Winner who smiled and said helpfully, “Go see your husband, Trowa.”

I nodded once in thanks for the fib and followed the clearly unsettled nurse out of the waiting room.  She led me down the hall to a room.  Pausing on the threshold, she spoke quietly, pressing a finger to her lips and I understood.  Duo was resting.  I ought to be quiet.

“All right,” I confirmed on a whisper and entered the room.  There was a seat at his bedside and I took it, leaning toward him, bracing my elbows on my knees and dangling my hands in the space between where my fingers could weave and lock and twist until Duo deigned to open his eyes.

I sat and watched him breathe.  He was still too pale, but he was alive.  I was alive.  To prove it, I reached up and fussed with his hair, nudging the strands away from his eyes until he stirred.  He drew in a deep breath, frowned, shifted, and hissed.

“Slow now, bokkie,” I warned him.  “You were shot.  Right thigh.”

“Oh.  Yeah,” he rasped.

I reached for the pitcher of water and poured a small amount into a plastic cup.  Reaching one arm under his pillow, I levered him up so he could take a drink.  We repeated this process several times until he murmured, “Thanks.  I’m good.”

I sat back down and looked at him.  We had so much to talk about that I didn’t know where to start or if this was even the time for it.  But I’d clearly waited too long to bring up the subject of his father’s death before.  I couldn’t make the same mistake now.  First, however, reconn.

“How do you feel?”

His lips quirked.  “Like I’ve been shot?”

He was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t summon a smile for him.  “I meant, how much medication have they given you?”

“Um, not too much, I guess.  If I stay still, it just sizzles a bit.”

I studied his face and had to concur.  His gaze was clear and focused despite the lines of exhaustion and stress bracketing his eyes.  Neither one of us said a word for a full minute.

Duo broke our staring contest by reaching for my hand and tracing his fingertips over my wrist, knuckles, fingers.  I knew he was remembering Khushrenada’s threats.

“Artist’s hands,” he murmured and I suddenly recalled his fascination with my hands back in the Land Rover in Egypt.  He’d glanced at them time and time again, smiling his doff arse off.  And then in the cavern, when Khushrenada had named his torture game – _fingers-knuckles-wrist_ – and Duo’s reaction: his snarl and tears.

I heard myself say, “This wasn’t all about my hands – leaving me in New York?”

His answer – “Yeah.” – was so blunt I was too stunned to get angry.  “Do you remember when I asked you to come live with me?” he asked suddenly.

I did.

“And I said you didn’t have to work in security if you wanted to do something else?”

“Ja.”

“And do you remember telling me just outside the ballroom at prom that you wanted to try something else?”  He laced our fingers together.  I didn’t nod.  I could barely breathe.

He confessed, “I had to do more than just protect your life, baby.  I had to protect your future.  These hands are gonna be a big part of that.  I wasn’t gonna let that asshole take away your music.”

I gaped at him.

“And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let him take away your life.”

I gripped his fingers tightly.  “You made that decision without me.  You cannot do that.  I won’t stand for it.”

“Hypocrite,” he accused softly.  “You kept me in the dark for months.  Didn’t tell me shit about Khushrenada’s people following us—”

“And I swore to you that I would make an honest effort not to do it again.  _You_ knew better.”  I ignored his glare and dug deeper, “Tell me the real reason.”

“What?  That is the—”

“No, it’s not.”

His jaw clenched.

“You promised to be honest with me,” I reminded him.

“I am.”

He might think he was, but in this case I was certain I’d sussed out the truth before he had.  I told him, “The real reason you left me behind in New York was that you knew I wouldn’t let you confront Khushrenada any other way.”

His jaw snapped shut with an audible click.

I leaned closer.  “Just like I knew you wouldn’t let me confront that brak one out, either.”  He stared up at the ceiling and I pressed my point, “I would have kept your secrets.”

“It was safer for you if Khushrenada had no reason to think you were hiding anything from him.”

“I’m a passable actor given the right motivation.”

He chuckled darkly.  “I’m thinkin’ that having my life on the line woulda been a little too much motivation if you get what I mean.”

I did and he was right.  I would have been terrified and Khushrenada probably would have scented it on me, sniffed it out like a hyena tracking a rotting carcass.  However—  “We would have been safer together.  I’d have called the Bartons to help us.”

Duo shook his head.  “Men like Khushrenada can buy whole police departments – hell, they’ve got their own private armies – but they never make a move unless they’re sure their odds of winning are guaranteed.  I had to do this alone.  I had to look weak and desperate.  It was the only way to draw him out and end this once and for all.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged.  He tilted his chin up as his lashes lifted – studying me as I watched him – and I saw it happen.  I saw the moment Duo let go of his pride.  It was a mirror of that moment in Vientiane when he’d grown up before my eyes, when I’d witnessed his resolve firming in the face of all the things that could keep us apart.  Here and now, I watched him reach out to me on a bridge of brutal honesty.

“OK,” he admitted and my breath snagged upon the first twinge of hope I’d felt since he kissed me in the school car park.  “Maybe you’re right.  Maybe there was another way to do it.  But I get kinda crazy when people try to hurt you.”

“Kind of crazy?” I echoed.  “Duo, there were moments you were absolutely—”

“I know,” he whispered.  Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes.  I brushed them away before they could cool.  He sighed and reached for my hands.

I groped for words.  There were still things that had to be said.  Eventually, I just blurted, “You asked me once to tell you what I need.”  He bit his lip, held his breath, and waited for my own confession, “I don’t know how to fix whatever’s broken inside of you, so I need _you_ to fix it for me.”

His eyes shimmered with tears.  “Fix what?  I’m fine.”

For his sake, for the sake of the ring I one day wanted to slide onto his left ring finger, I forced him to face the truth: “You’re not.  You have to let go of this rage that makes you charge down loaded pistols.”

His throat worked, but he didn’t try to deny that he’d done just that.  “What if I can’t?”

“It’ll end us.”  One way or another.  Of that I was certain.

More tears spilled over his lashes.  “Stupid medication,” he grumbled.  I didn’t question the assertion; I merely reached out to wipe the moisture away again.

He drew in a shaky breath.  “But… what if this – this thing – inside me is here to stay?” he rasped and I’d never seen him so afraid of anything.  “Are you gonna leave?”

I couldn’t stop the exasperation from blooming, but I didn’t try to hold onto it.  Blowing it out with my next breath, I stood and leaned over him, aligning our gazes.  “I’m a merc, Duo,” I reminded him.

He clutched at the bed sheets.  “No, you’re—”

“I am.  Always.  I might not choose it for a profession, but I’ll always be one first and foremost.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” I answered, looking deeply into his eyes, “that I’m not giving up on us without a bloody long fight.”

He blinked and then, as my words registered, he grinned.  It wobbled and then held.

“And I expect you to fight right alongside me,” I warned.

He nodded.  “Okay.”

I sighed out the breath I’d been holding and reached out to brush the flyaway strands back from his temple and brows.  “I’m sorry I shot you.”

“It probably saved my life,” he surprised me by saying.  “Khushrenada wasn’t fucking around.  Looking back on it… yeah.  I wasn’t really thinking straight, either.”

I pressed a kiss to his forehead.

He added, “I’m sorry I gave you a skrik in New York, taking off like that.”

“Never do it again,” I commanded quietly.

He met my gaze.  “Yeah, okay.  I won’t,” he promised.

This time, I pressed my lips to his, sealing our bargain with a kiss.  His fingers curled into my shoulders and I thought of the long road ahead of us.  The Japanese authorities would want answers as to why Duo had been shot.  Duo would have weeks of rehabilitation ahead.  It would take months or maybe even years to sort out his fears and fury.  But I wasn’t about to give him up.  In this, I was always going to be a merc; I was always going to fight for what was worth protecting, and a future with Duo was more than worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for The Quest, but don't despair. There is so much MORE that Duo and Trowa need to deal with. I honestly don't know how I'm going to write it all, to be honest. So your support will be especially loved and treasured. Thanks, my dear friends.


	27. Graduation Day, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duo POV
> 
> This update is for all of you who have been waiting (patiently or not, but especially those of you who have gently and kindly poked me) for an update.

“And then there was that time our boy Trowa here tried his hand at camouflage,” Bryce announced, his voice booming and bouncing off the walls of my hospital room.  “Remember that, Cap’n?”

“I sorely do,” he said, chuckling through his thick beard.

“Oh, shit.  I gotta hear this,” I declared.  It sure as hell sounded like a story that would distract me from the sizzling flame leisurely gnawing its way through my leg, but I rolled my head toward Trowa to gauge his reaction.  I was just in time to catch him in the act of rolling his eyes up at the ceiling and making a manful effort to wrestle back a smile.  Or maybe a wince.  

Y’know, I kinda almost felt sorry for him.  Of all the guys from his troupe who could have stationed themselves in my hospital room, I was pretty sure Bryce had the most dirt on Trowa.  And the most story-telling panache.  The captain was as big, beefy, and silent as they come, so I could see why Trowa had been damn grateful when he’d insisted on taking first watch.  But when Bryce had claimed the wingman position…  Well, let’s just say Tro had been less than thrilled.  I’d half expected his glare to melt the plastic of the chair Bryce had settled into with a big, fat shit-eating grin on his craggy face.

That same grin reappeared now as Bryce rubbed his hands together in anticipation of all the humiliation he was about to dish out.

Trowa exhaled audibly and I gave his captured hand a squeeze.  “Hey, I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

“You’d better,” he retorted, reaching over and flicking my ear with his middle finger.

“Oi!” I objected.

“Goof.”

OK, yeah.  That I was.  But it looked like I could learn a thing or two from Bryce.  I snickered as he launched into the tale, gesturing with his unbandaged arm, and I could almost smell the jungle muck a five-year-old Trowa had covered himself with.  “Musta grabbed a hank of moss with some dead bats or something in it ‘cuz that kid was ripe!  Could smell ‘im coming from a mile away!”

“Hah!  Not so camouflaged, then,” I diplomatically concluded.

“Next to a dung heap, mayhap,” the captain muttered.

Trowa’s sigh was so expressive, I could just about hear his five-year-old self’s justification.  I giggled.  “Wish I’d seen it,” I told him quietly.

He quirked a brow at me.

“Maybe not _smelled_  it, but…”

“Yoh, stop wysing with the oke who’ll be doling out your pain meds,” Trowa advised.

“Um, yeah.  Good idea.  Don’t know what came over me.”

Trowa rubbed his thumb over my knuckles and gave me a soft smile.  “I do.”  

Yup, he sure did.  And he looked pretty damn in love with it, whatever it was.  Damn, but I was a lucky guy – Trowa might never be able to forgive or forget that I’d left him behind in New York, but he was still right here next to me and he was staying.  He wasn’t asking for more apologies.  All he wanted was a second chance for us.

But I had to wonder how many Khushrenadas were still out there.  Not necessarily dudes who were obsessed with obscure artifacts that my mom had been researching, but assholes who wanted something from me and wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever necessary to get it.  If another one crawled out from under some rock and set his sights on Trowa, how the hell was I gonna handle it?  Trowa wasn’t going to let me get away with pushing him out of the line of fire a second time.

“—took ten cans of tomato juice just to get the stench of rotting corpse outta his hair!” Bryce guffawed.  “Ginger was a good look for him, wunnit Cap’n?”

Captain Barton’s white teeth flashed.  “Might even have a snap of that somewhere.”

“Bugger all to hell,” Trowa muttered, slumping in his plastic chair.

Before I could do more than open my mouth (to either demand a copy of this purported photo or try to save Trowa from more humiliation – I honestly wasn’t sure which), the hospital room door opened and a nurse stuck her head in.  She very politely said something in Japanese and all of us very politely stared blankly back at her.  Until Quatre Raberba Winner shouldered past, greasing his way with a dazzling smile.  Whatever objection the nurse might have made was sparkling-smiled outta her.  Before I could ask Q what in the hell he was still doing here, he invited himself into my snazzy pastel hospital room and was followed closely by two Japanese police officers.

Oh, yay.  This was gonna be fun.

“I’m your translator,” Quatre informed us and I just shut up and smiled.  Go with the flow.  Bhoo yeah.

I waved weakly from my hospital bed as Q introduced me.  Trowa was still clutching my hand on top of the blankets for any and all to see when it was his turn.  Tro’s intro had an extra sentence attached to it and damn what I wouldn’t have given for my iPhone so I could Google that shit up.

Captain Barton held out a hand to the nearest officer who looked flustered for a moment before accepting the handshake.  “Bodrick Barton.  I’m Trowa’s da,” he cut in before Quatre could speak for him.  “And this oke’s my brother-in-law, Bryce.”

IDs were produced and inspected.  Questions were asked, translated, and answered.  (Confidently in the captain’s case.  Firmly in Trowa’s.  Brashly in Bryce’s.  Then all was translated with a great deal of soft-spoken charm by our resident princeling.)  Smiling like a moron high on morphine, I learned that I was here in Japan on vacation, hiking Mount Fuji with my husband and his family.  We’d been trekking through Aokigahara when we’d run into some seriously bad dudes.  We’d been lucky that Quatre had been there right when we’d needed a good Samaritan.  Neither Yuy nor Chang were mentioned.  Nor were any of the other guys in the Barton Troupe.  In the chaos caused by the volcanic eruption, it was doubtful that the hospital staff would have bothered to keep tabs on who had staggered in with who in the sudden influx of humanity.

The captain kept the story short and simple.  Our translator even offered up an explanation for my injury that didn’t implicate us:

“Yakuza,” Quatre stated baldly, a hard look gleaming in his blue eyes, and _that_  garnered an interesting reaction from Japan’s finest.

As the officers exchanged a quick, nervous look, I realized just how big of a favor Q was doing for us.  In bringing the Japanese mafia into the story, he was guaranteeing that things would be handled quietly, if at all.  I kept my eyes on the cops and I could practically see their priorities shift; if the media got wind of helpless tourists being targeted by organized crime in the Land of Hospitality, it was gonna be a big problem.  They wanted us packed up and shipped off to wherever we’d come from as soon as possible, taking any potential complaints and lawsuits with us.  So, it looked like we were in the clear.  Thanks to Quatre Winner.  I spent the rest of the interview boggling with silent appreciation.

When the door finally shut behind the boys in navy blue, I beamed at our master strategist.  “Dude, did you just stick your neck out and misdemeanor for us?  I’m impressed.”

“Maybe,” he drawled.

Trowa’s brows quirked with genuine humor and curiosity as he observed, “I take it you no longer feel the urge to rip his small intestines out through his nostrils, pack them with pig shite and Skittles, then shove them back down his throat.”

I squinted at my will-be-pain-med-manager, admiring his barely-there smirk until the words filtered through, and then I grinned widely.  Hah!  Yeah, that particular threat sure sounded like something I would have snarled at some point after pothole number seven hundred and four.  The reminder of the pain whirling and drilling its way through my thigh had me wincing as I owned up to the threat.

“Yup.  I think we’re good,” I chirped.  Still, letting the guy off the hook completely just wasn’t my style.  “But ask me again when the drugs wear off.”  Something I was __not__ looking forward to.  At all.

“So I guess I don’t need backup after all,” Quatre announced with a grin, pushing the door open wide and revealing Wufei Chang with a laptop folded under his arm and Heero Yuy all buttoned up in his coat, both of ‘em ready to skedaddle.  Hell, their scowls even matched.

“Excellent!”  I waved them over.  “Get in here and start talking.”

“I have a train to catch,” Yuy qualified.

“In that case, shut the door behind you, Chang,” I ordered.  “Let’s make this quick and painless.”

For a solid thirty seconds after he did as I asked, no one said a word.  It was Trowa who finally got the ball rolling: “What the bugger and fuck happened out there?”

Yuy’s lips twitched like he might actually be human enough to smile.  “Antimatter.  Contained in a gateway and enclosed in some kind of forcefield.  Possibly magnetic.”

I blurted, “Did the OJs know we were gonna be dealing with antimatter?”

“We had no proof,” Yuy admitted, “but we were prepared for that possibility.”

“I’m sensing a shit ton of experiments in your near future,” I drawled.  Hell, if anyone could confirm it, it’d be him.  I mused, “So that’s why the grenade only took out the statue and not the whole shebang?”

He nodded.

“What statue?” Quatre demanded and I took five while Yuy and Chang brought him up to speed.

“I wish I’d seen it.”

“Without the hand-to-hand combat?” I added before his forlorn expression could turn pissy.

“Yes, that would have been nice.”  But I could tell he was really feeling left out of our chummy badass club.  “So the statue was filled or infused with some sort of conductive metal, and when the pieces of the key were inserted…”

“All hell broke loose,” I muttered.

“Was it another dimension?” he pressed.

I shrugged.  “My mom’s notes weren’t completely clear on that, but it may have been some kind of mirror world made of antimatter.”

“Antimatter and regular matter annihilate each other when they come into contact,” Yuy contributed.

“So there’d have to have been a forcefield,” I concluded, drawing together Yuy’s logic.  “Otherwise Japan would have gone kaboom when it opened.”

“But it wasn’t open, not really,” Trowa reminded me.  “The key was in the wrong position.”

“Yeah.  The whole thing was unstable.  I switched the arrangement around and, luckily, Khushrenada believed me.”  I glanced at Chang.

“Once he was certain he’d defeated your spirit, he was convinced.  Well-played, Lord Maxwell.”

“Jesus, Professor, don’t call me that.  Ever again.”

He inclined his head.

“And now the portal’s closed?” Quatre probed.

I quizzed Yuy, “D’you think your grenade busted the key?”

“Excavating for it without a metal detector in a magnetically irregular area could take years.  If it is still out there.”

True enough.  I turned to Quatre and answered confidently, “Hell yes, the damn thing’s closed and as long as the key’s outta commission it’s gonna stay that way.”

“How’d you shut it?” Quatre was dying to know.

I smirked.  “It turns out that Khushy had just enough matter in him for it to, er, really matter.  If you get what I mean.”  Just in case he didn’t, I added a wink.

His mouth dropped open.  “You pushed—er, I mean he fell into the portal?  Of antimatter?”

“Kablooie,” I deadpanned.

“But… are you sure he’s gone?”

“Yes,” Chang replied in an incontestable tone.  “The altar at the base of the statue was obvious.  A sacrifice was necessary to close the portal.”

The hand wrapped around mine tightened and I bit back a wince.  The altar.  Oh, yeah.  Tro was gonna have a few words for me on that later.  Well, I had gotten off pretty lightly earlier.  “The real question is the only one we can’t answer,” I told them.  “We have no way of knowing if the portal on the other side is still usable.”

“It’s of little consequence,” Chang scoffed.

“Not if someone from Antimatter World figures out how to open it.  At least with a physical gateway on this world, we’d know where any threats would be coming from.  Now that there’s no gateway, there’s no telling where a new one might pop up if our antimatter neighbors wanna say ‘hello.’”

“The odds of a gateway opening anywhere on the Earth are minuscule,” Yuy argued.  “It’s far more likely they’d open the gateway into empty space.”

“That doesn’t necessarily rule out an alien invasion,” I pointed out just for shits and giggles.

Yuy’s frown tightened.  His fists clenched.  “I have to get to my lab.”  Moving toward the door, he added, “I’ll send you a copy of my report.”

“Uh.  Right.  OK, then.  Looking forward to it, man.”  Yay.  More reports to read.  Super.

There was no point in shouting after him.  He was already out the door, beating a path back to his lab and geek machines.  “You gonna head out, too, Professsor?” I asked Chang.

“Yes.  I’m sure we’ll have more to discuss once this report has been made available.”

“Undoubtedly.  And thanks.”

A single, glossy black eyebrow lifted imperiously.

“For what you said back at the gateway.”  Reminding me not to do anything dumb.  “And after that… for what you did.”  I mimed a karate chop; I’d have to show him my wicked round-house kick another time.

A brief, vicious smile flashed across his face and I knew he was remembering that moment in front of the uncontained gateway when he’d cranked open a can of whoop ass on Khushrenada.  “The pleasure was mine.”

Chang then included Trowa in his remarks, “My compliments to worthy opponents.”

Trowa nodded.  That and no more, but I guessed that was OK.

Chang reached for the door knob; Quatre put out a hand to stop him.  “Would you like a ride to the airport?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Speaking of… thanks, Q,” I remembered to say.

“For what?”

“Uh, giving a bleeding stranger a ride to the ER?” I reminded him with a crooked smile.

He chuckled.  “That was my job, wasn’t it?  To handle the exit?”  This he aimed at Trowa who didn’t deny it.  “Howard’s standing by at the local airport with the rest of your friends.”

Trowa nodded.

I grinned.  “Sounds good.”

“Get well soon, Duo.  And try not to be too much of a terrible patient for your husband, eh?”

“My—say what?”

With a smile of pure evil, Quatre vanished from the room.  Sadistic little shit.

“Is someone going to explain that little bomb before my head explodes?”

“I’ll go scout for a mop and bucket,” Bryce offered and Captain Barton followed him out with a twinkle in his eye.

“It’s our cover story,” Trowa explained quietly.  “Winner told the staff that we’re married.”

I thought of that extra bit of introduction that Q had given Trowa for the benefit of the police officers.  “And that’s what Quatre told the cops,” I guessed.

“Yah.”

“Well.  OK, then.”

Trowa’s brows lifted.  “No objections?”

I shook my head.  “You?”

“Yah.  One.”

Aw, shit.  I could guess: the altar thing.  Here we go…

“You ran toward that clearing and Khushrenada, planning to send either him or both of you into that portal.”

There was no point in denying it.  I didn’t have a convincing alternate explanation handy.  I licked my lips to buy myself a second.  Just one more second of having his hand in mine.  “I just wanted it finished.  I wanted you safe.  I wanted it over with.  If I let it go – lost my chance – Khushrenada was never gonna give me another one.  It was all or nothing.”

“You made that choice without me.”

“Yeah.”

“You distracted me, made me believe we were about to retreat.”

“I did.”

He shook his head in mute fury.

I clutched at him, but I just couldn’t think of anything to say.  We’d already had a variation of this argument and I’d already promised to never leave him behind again.  I honestly didn’t think he’d renege his vow to stay with me, but if he did then there wasn’t much I could do about it.  Except cry, maybe.

When he finally looked me in the eye again, he unclenched his jaw and said one word: “Partners.”

I nodded frantically, giddy with relief.  “Hell, yes.  I promised and I keep my promises.”

Trowa’s hand – the one not being crushed in my grasp – pushed my bangs back from my face as if he were clearing the air between us.  “Wufei Chang,” he said quietly.

I gave him a cheeky grin.  “Sorry, you just missed him.”

He swiftly pinched the tip of my nose.  “Goof.”

“Sexy piano man.”

Trowa didn’t even give me eyebrow sass over it.  “He and Yuy know each other.  It’s likely due to him that Yuy knew where to find you in Laos.”

Damn.  He was probably right about that.

Trowa continued, “Also, thanks to him, my troupe knew where to find us.”

And without the Bartons showing up, Trowa probably wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of my hospital bed, letting me cut off the circulation to his hand.  Jesus.

Y’know, meds sure did funny things to me, like make me bawl and panic at the slightest provocation.  I glanced up and studied the empty seats where Trowa’s surrogate father and “Uncle” Bryce had been guarding the door like they were our freakin’ bodyguards.  Holy hell.  I had a bunch of mercs for in-laws.  Well, not really.  Being married was also just part of our cover story, but someday… yeah.  Someday it was gonna happen for real.

“You didn’t ask him why,” Trowa said, wrangling my rampaging thoughts.

Why?  Oh, right.  Why.  I hadn’t asked Chang why he’d helped me deal with Khushy.  “I already know why,” I answered with a wry grin.  “Your Google skills inspired me to have Noventa check him out.  I know what he had to lose.”  And I hoped Khushrenada was burning in hell for threatening the guy’s unborn child.  I cleared my throat.  “So, is it a boy or a girl?  Or don’t you know?”

“A daughter.”

Somehow, hearing Trowa confirm it just brought it home.  Wow.  Chang was gonna be a dad.  I could totally see it.  And maybe it was the painkillers putting thoughts into my head, but I kinda wanted to be there for him.  Khushrenada had threatened the guy’s family the same way he’d threatened mine, and both Chang and I had gotten our payback.  That made us comrades.  Sort of.  Eh, I’d see how I felt about it once they cut back on my happy pills and I was tripping over my crutches.  Joy.  At least I wasn’t bursting into tears over it.  I still felt like a complete nitwit for my waterworks earlier, but — shit — Tro had scared me.

“New rule,” I’d told him just following our kiss.  “Don’t give me that apocalypse look when you bring up relationship stuff.”

“Right,” he’d agreed.  “New rule number two: if I can’t do something, then it’s not on for you as well.  That includes chucking off after bosbefok billionaires on some doff quest for legendary bloody weapons of mass destruction.”

“Got it.”  I didn’t like it, but I got it.  If Tro and I were gonna do right by each other, then I was gonna have to let him take the risks right along with me.  The very thought left me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I was gonna have to suck it up and deal with it.  When—or dare I hope _if_ —that kind of shit ever happened again, Tro and I were gonna have to sit down and figure it out together.  But I could predict how that was gonna go: we’d fight over who would or should be taking the bigger risks; it’d get ugly.  As I just didn’t have the stomach for that, it pretty much guaranteed that this was gonna be our last death-defying adventure.

I wondered if this would be the last time I’d be seeing Heero Yuy, Quatre Winner, and Wufei Chang in the same room together, too.  

“Despite the risks, Chang was on our side,” Trowa admitted.

I nodded.  “He’s a good guy.”

Trowa didn’t say anything about Quatre or Yuy and neither did I.  I wanted – really, _really_  wanted – to believe that they were our friends, but I couldn’t.  Not yet.  Quatre was the only son of a mogul and Yuy was a driven scientist.  I could understand Chang’s motivations, but I had to allow that the others might not have involved themselves purely for my sake.  Maybe they really had wanted to help save the world from a megalomaniac and it was as simple as that.  Only time would tell.

And speaking of things that only time would tell, my doctor stopped by for a chat.

“Pain?” he asked, grunting out the single English word.

“Um… yes,” I replied and he scribbled something on my file.

“In hospital.  Three days.  Because check of infection,” he informed us.

Oh, yay.

“We understand,” Trowa answered on my behalf.

“Nurse will come.”

And that concluded his visit.  The nurse did arrive soon after that with bandages and such.  Clearly, it was time to check the hole in my leg.  “Hey, babe, can you rustle us up some cards or something?”

The grip on my hand stayed firm.  “All right.”

“Um… like now?”  I did not want him to see this.  Neither the gory bullet hole nor me in pain.

He gave me a long, silent look and then he left.  A good thing, too.  My leg looked _nasty._   Not in an oozing-puss kind of way, thank God, but in the bruised-to-hell kind of way.  Plus, there was a hole where there damn well shouldn’t be one.  Hell, I almost puked.  But the nurse was a pro.  She helped me take care of business, then got me outta my hospital duds, got me washed up and redressed, and the sheets changed in twenty minutes flat.  This woman could have entered an Olympic event for patient care.

Trowa caught the open door as she left and let himself back in, cluing me in to the fact that I hadn’t fooled him in the least.  He set a pack of cards on the bedside table, but we both ignored them.  I reached for his hand again, irritated with myself.  And the drugs that were making me so damn needy.  Trowa didn’t object, so that gave us zilch to argue about or negotiate, which left nothing for me to do except doze and drool on my pillow until the nurse showed up again with food and meds.  The sunlight took on a rosy hue, growing dimmer by the moment.  Visiting hours had to be coming to an end, but I didn’t say anything.  As if ignoring the fact that I was gonna have to let go of Trowa’s hand at some point would nullify it.  I mean, Jesus, the guy was gonna have to take a whiz sooner or later.

Trowa held my hand through dinner – some kind of goopy hot rice cereal thing – and poured more water for me so I could choke down my miracle drugs.  Stomach full and mind buzzing with medication, I could almost forget about the hole in my leg and the fact that I’d barely moved a muscle in hours.  Trowa stood and began smoothing my hair back away from my face with his free hand.  I gazed into his eyes, a goofy grin stretching my mouth.  “That feels nice, hubby,” I think I said.

His fingertips brushed down my cheek.  “To me, too, bokkie.”

I blinked my eyes shut—

—and when I opened them next, it was morning and Trowa was standing watch at the window, prying the blinds apart with his fingers.

“Hey,” I croaked.  “Did I miss the party?”

The blinds snapped back into place with a rustling tinkle that reminded me of my full bladder.  Oh Christ, I was gonna have to move.  Trowa pressed his lips to the middle of my forehead, and I leaned into the warmth as if I could escape reality and hide in that single touch until everything was hunky-dory again.

“Yah,” he breathed and I envied his minty-fresh breath.  “You did.”

“Well, damn,” I bitched.  “I don’t suppose you guys left me a breath mint or something?”

He nodded toward the nightstand and I winced at the sight of the plastic water pitcher and spit-dish.  “I’ve got you covered.”

“Oh, joy.  I get to brush my teeth in bed.  Don’t tell me it’s Christmas already?”

Trowa snorted and started fussing with the toothbrush and toothpaste.  He held my shoulders up so I could scrub, rinse, and spit.  Any sense of accomplishment at having managed something mundane by myself – however trivial – was obliterated by the wave of dizziness I felt at simply having my head lifted eight piddly inches off the pillow.  My bladder was getting insistent and I had no freakin’ idea how I was gonna make it to the john.  In the end, I had to ask Tro to find a nurse.  He waited in the hall until she left.

I glared at my elevated leg even after Tro settled down in the chair next to my bed.  Then I glared at the blanket and sheets.  They were making my skin itch.  And I glared up at the ceiling since I couldn’t glare at the mattress which was starting to feel like a lumpy rock underneath muscles that were starting to twitch from sheer boredom.

“I hate this,” I informed him.  And I still had an additional day of it to endure as the docs monitored me for signs of infection.  Jesus.

“I know.”

I guess he did.  He had that memento in his calf after all.  “Yeah, but I’m not gonna even try to be a man about it,” I warned him.

“Be a crabby antie all you want,” he invited with a lopsided smile.  “Bring it on.”

So I did.  I bitched a lot.  Not about the pain, though.  Never about that.  I whined about the meds constantly pitching me into La La Land – “I’m not a two-week old who needs hourly nappy times, damn it!” – and the mattress from Hell – “They got this damn thing from a Spanish Inquisition yard sale.”  Just to name a few.  I hated the way my skin felt both dry and unclean.  I wanted a shower.  I wanted to go home.  I wanted to be able to just stand the hell up without passing out.  Hell, I wouldn’t have cared if Trowa’d had to hold me upright.  Just to be able to _move_ would have been freakin’ amazing.  I couldn’t even roll over in bed.

Trowa manfully took it upon himself to keep me distracted from the craptastic time I was having; I actually grinned when he smacked a deck of trump cards on the bed tray between us.

“Dude.  I am so gonna kick your ass at Old Maid.  I have psychic powers, man.  Psychic.”

“Prove it.”

I did.  After winning for the fifth time in a row, Trowa confiscated the deck and, shuffling them with sexy deftness, he started explaining the most convoluted version of Gin Rummy ever invented.  Hell, even the rules had rules and footnotes and addendums and shit.  Not even Hilde could have kept all this crap straight.

How the hell could he kick my ass at rummy yet hadn’t been able to see how the whole Khushrenada thing would have played out?  It just freakin’ boggled my mind.

“How the hell did you come up with all this crap?” I demanded after he’d called me out for violating rule number 67d revision iii-dash-12.

His lips quirked.  “We added a rule every time someone won two hands in a row.”

“Well, can we start subtracting a few every time I lose?”

He chuckled.  “Sure, bokkie.”

Easier said than done, as it turned out.  I had to fight and cajole for every rule I wanted deleted.  Trowa was ruthless.  I finally had to whip out the big guns: I tried to look adorable, but that just made him laugh so hard he teared up.  I fell back on the tried-and-true method of whining obnoxiously… until I ran out of energy for it.  I had only one thing left in my arsenal, and I went for it.

“Please, hubby?”

Trowa lowered his head and sighed in defeat.  Bhoo yeah!  Kiss another half dozen rules good-bye!

But before I could do my spastic victory arm wave, he said, “You have no idea what hearing you call me that does to me.”

I took in his slumped shoulders and gruff tone, then tossed my cards aside and reached for him.  “Maybe the same thing it does to me every time I so much as think it?”

He looked up sharply, his breath catching.

“Yeah,” I answered his unasked question.  “Yeah, I want…”   _You.  And me.  And wedding bands, a big walk-in closet and a master bedroom with an en suite bath._   “But I haven’t earned it.  I get that.”  I ran my fingertips back and forth over his knuckles to remind us both of what I still had to prove.  I had yet to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak, and actually act like his partner.  Equal stakes and all that.  He deserved that much from the guy who was damn well gonna be sayin’ “yes.”

I had no damn idea what Trowa would have said.  At that moment, my dinner arrived.  Then Bryce charged in and kicked Trowa out with an order to go get some chow with the captain.

“I still don’t get it,” the guy muttered as I poked at my mush du jour.  “Where he learned how to…”  He gestured aimlessly.  “—do all this.”

All this -- all that Trowa was: loyal, tenacious, brave, intelligent, and loving… just to name a few of my personal favorites.

I rolled my eyes.  “Duh, man.  From you all.”

Bryce did the classic double-take before a grin just about split his face in half.  “Who’da thunk it,” he remarked, basking in the possibility.

The hospital routine was frustrating, but comforting at the same time.  Stable.  Kind of mesmerizing.  That’s my excuse for not noticing how quiet Trowa was the next day until it was nearly lunch.  Also, they’d started cutting back on my pain meds, so I was finally able to focus.  I reached for his arm, tweaking his shirt sleeve and making him startle out of the staring contest he’d been having with the wall.

“Talk to me, please,” I begged.

“About what?” he replied and I noticed for the first time how tired he looked.

“About those dark circles under your eyes,” I said.  “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“Enough.  I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t.  I could see it now that I wasn’t being such a self-absorbed dick on sleepy pills.  “Where’s the captain?  Bryce?”

“Around.”

“Well, send one of ‘em in here.  It’s __your__ nappy time.”

“You realize that a ‘nappie’ where I come from is not what you think it is.”

“OK, well, what do you call that thing where you, y’know, close your eyes for a long time even though the sun’s still up?”

“Doss.”

“Well, go doss, then.”

“I will,” he promised, “right after you.”

“Yeah?”  I waited for him to nod.  “OK.  I’m gonna hold you to that.”

But a meal and round of snore-inducing meds later, there he was hovering next to my bed still looking like his skin was made of aged tissue paper.

“You’re not sleeping,” I accused by way of greeting.

“Fuck all, Duo.  Just leave be.  I’m all right.”

“Go sell it to someone else, man.  I ain’t buying.”

He ran both hands through his hair, standing it on end in several places.  At least it looked clean.  So did his clothes.  But then again, a shower and a change of clothes was almost as good as caffeine.  Better in some cases.

“Duo…” he tried.

“Stop.  C’mere.”

He moved closer slowly, scuffing his boot tread against the floor tiles.  I grabbed his hand and yanked.  He almost fell on top of me.  My hands grabbed his shoulders before he could.  His arms were slow to brace himself up.  He was weak.  Shaky.  “What day is it?” I demanded.

“Tuesday,” he answered slowly.

Khushrenada had bit the big one on Sunday.  “When was the last time you slept?”

He moved away but I was one step ahead of him, winding my fingers into the fabric of his shirt to keep him where I wanted him.  “Have you slept since we got here?”  He said nothing.  “On the plane here?”  His jaw clenched.  “Jesus, Tro.  Was it before Sakhalin?”

“No, I…  I dossed a bit here and there.”

“Being knocked unconscious and buried alive doesn’t fucking count.”

He shuddered, his shoulders hunching like he wanted to curl himself up into a ball in the corner and rock back and forth.  “Get up here,” I directed, pulling him closer.

“What?  No.  The bed’s too narrow for the both of us.”

“We’ll fit just fine.  Cooperate with me or it’s gonna be Bryce cuddling up to you instead.”

He swore softly, but he caved, slumping onto the bed.  One knee found a home between mine and I gritted my teeth as I wiggled as far over as I could given the traction my leg was in.  The whole thing took five seconds and I had Trowa in my arms.  Just this and I felt about nine hundred percent better.

“Duo…” he sighed.

“Don’t say it, babe.  A husband’s got rights.”

He snorted, but he didn’t tell me he shouldn’t be here.  He didn’t say it because he knew it wasn’t true; Trowa had every right to share my bed and damn anyone who tried to say otherwise.

“Sleep, baby,” I whispered, rubbing his back.

“Can’t,” he choked out.

Holding him close and tight, I borrowed one of his favorite lines, “Tell me.”

For long minutes, he said nothing.  I watched the minute hand tick from one dot to the next on the face of the clock across the room.  At last, he confessed, “When I close my eyes, I’m back in that… that—”

That fucking truck bed tool chest.  “You’re not.  You’re not in there anymore.  The captain and the guys – they got you outta there.  You came to my rescue like some freakin’ knight in shining armor.”

“Is it?”  He leaned back and looked into my eyes.

“Yes.  You really did.”

He ducked his head.  Sobbed in a breath.  “You were there with me.  In the dark.  This is just the sort of thing you’d say.”

“Hey, we’re not in the dark,” I reminded him, giving him a small shake.  “Your eyes are open.  You made it out.  You saved my life.  It’s over.”

He shook his head and I just didn’t know what the hell else to say.  So I just held on.  Not two minutes later, he was out like a light.  I was squashed between his unmoving weight and the pallet.  I kept my arms around him and watched the door, a snarl ready should anyone decide to look in on me and throw a fit at what they found.

Five minutes… ten minutes… twenty…  Everything was cool.  Trowa’s breaths were deep and even.  A small patch of my hospital gown dampened, sticking to my shoulder.  Thirty minutes passed without so much as a twitch and then suddenly he shuddered, jerking back so violently I almost lost my grip on him.

“Hey!  Tro!”  Fear strangled my voice to a thread of sound.  “Baby, wake up.  You’re OK!”

“Duo?”  He reached for his own eyes, blinking once, twice— “Duo?”

“Your eyes are open, baby.  You’re really here.  With me.”

His breath came in frantic gasps.  “No.  No, no, no—”

“Hey!” I breathed.  “I’m safe.  You’re safe.  Khushrenada’s gone.”

The words did diddly squat.  His eyes unfocused.  “Nooit,” he wheezed on a thin breath.  Like he was trying to conserve oxygen.  “Nooit!  He’s out there.  And you’re—”  

“You’re having a panic attack,” I informed him gently, but the words didn’t seem to jar him from the horror he was caught in.  “Take a deep breath.  C’mon, baby.  It’s OK.”

Trowa sat up, crouching over me on his knees and lunging for the wall, the bed railing, anything within reach and just beyond it.

“Look at me!” I begged as quietly as I could manage.  I grabbed for his face and caught him, petted his cheek.  I whispered, “You’re not in that fucking box.”

He closed his eyes.  His entire body was shaking.  I pulled him back toward me.  He didn’t even have the strength to resist.  He practically curled up in my lap and when the tears came, I didn’t try to shush him.  Jesus.  Is this what he’d been going through over the last two damn days?  How had the captain and Bryce not noticed this?  And what the hell was I gonna do to fix it?

The noise eventually drew the attention of the staff, but I gestured so emphatically at the investigating nurse that she disappeared quicker than she’d appeared.  We probably only had a couple of minutes before she found a doctor or three.  Well, fine.  It was about time we got the hell outta here anyway.

“Trowa?  Duo?  You guys doin’ all right?”

“Bryce!” I just about shouted.

He took one look at the quivering mess of Trowa in my arms.  “Jesus H. Christ.”  Leaning back into the hall, he gestured for someone to get their ass over here and suddenly the captain was striding over the threshold.  His big hands reached for Trowa and I gaped as he yanked my soulmate right outta the bed.

“Trowa!  Stand tall!”  Grip tight on Trowa’s shoulders, he shook him hard.

“Stop it!” I shouted.  This wasn’t what I’d wanted.  “Let him go!”  

Bodrick didn’t glance my way as he threw out a hand to halt my protest.  Sprawled across the mattress in mid-lunge, I froze.

“Trowa!  Pull it together for your man!”

Amazingly, he did.  His teeth were chattering and his hands were shaking, but he did.  Still, I couldn’t just lie here and watch him suffer!  “Let him go now.”

“Nooit.”

“Let me have him!”

The captain rounded on me and said in a surprisingly gentle voice, “You don’t understand what he needs.”

“The hell I don’t!  Just—”

“Duo.  He’s stuck in that place.  Your reassurances won’t free him of it.”

Maybe he was right.  “OK, so what do we do?”  At this point, I’d try anything.

Bodrick called Bryce over.  “Find a pair of snips.”

“What—?”

The sound of Bryce rummaging through the drawers cut off my question.  I didn’t care what they were doing so long as it would help Trowa.  “How long has this been going on?” I choked out instead.

“Every time he dosses,” Bodrick replied, still holding Trowa firmly.  “Not this bad, though.”

I stared at Trowa.  I’d never seen him so lost, so young, so damn fragile.

“Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back in that bakkie chest.”

I watched Bodrick rub Trowa’s shoulders briskly as if trying to generate some warmth and I thought about what it must be like to wake up in the dark.  Powerless.  Helpless.  Counting your last breaths with no hope of rescue.  Most people would lose their shit.  Their life flashing before their eyes as they waited to die—

“He said I was with him.  In that trunk.”

“Aw, shit,” Bryce muttered.  At my frantic look, he explained, “With you here, Tro-boy can’t tell the difference between, uh…”

“Oh.  So, how do we snap him out of it?”

Bodrick held out his hand.  “Snips.”

Bryce laid a pair of first aid scissors in his meaty palm.

“What are you gonna do with those?” I demanded.

Bodrick dragged Trowa over to me.  He wasn’t shaking as badly as he had been.  His eyes were open but there was a fear in them that I’d never seen in him before.  Was he afraid he was hallucinating?

Bodrick pushed the scissors into Trowa’s hands.  “Take these.”

“Snips,” Trowa mused as if surprised by their existence.

“Aye.  Take them and cut off that bandage.”

That bandage.  The bandage wrapped around my thigh.  I held still as Trowa leaned closer.  His hands still trembled, but I didn’t give a damn that he might poke or cut me.  I was pretty sure I could see where the captain was going with this and if it helped, then no price was too great.

Trowa was surprisingly careful as he slid the scissors across my skin.  Snip!  Snip!  Snip!  The dressing over my wound gaped open.  I kept my eyes locked on Trowa, saw him swallow thickly as cool air hit my un-sutured wound.

“You shot Duo,” the captain told him.  “You got out of that place and you shot Duo.”

Trowa reached out and placed a freezing cold hand on my skin, bracketing the damaged flesh.  “Duo?”

“Yeah, babe?”  I tried not to grit my teeth.  It was only a little pressure.  It was fine.  Really.

“Don’t,” the captain told me.  “He needs to know that it hurts.  The pain makes it real.”

I looked from Trowa to the man who was his father in all but flesh.  Then I reached for Trowa and tilted his face toward mine.  “You did that,” I said with a nod to the bullet hole.  “You remember?”

He nodded.

“Why’d you do it, baby?”

“To save you.”

“And you did.  You did that.”

He looked down at the bruised, punctured flesh.  His breathing quickened.  His eyes darted around the room as if he might – maybe – start believing it wasn’t gonna vanish the next time he blinked.  “What did you say?  Before you shot the sail?  Your lips moved, but I couldn’t hear the words.”

I had to think for a moment.  “In Egypt?  When we first met?” I checked.

He nodded, breath held.

I reaffirmed my grip on the back of his neck.  “’Keep him safe.’”

He blinked, his expression blanking.

“That’s what I said.  It’s what I always say when I need to take care.”

Take care.  Trowa was the one who’d taught me the importance of that, had told me that having someone’s life and well-being in my hands ought to make me be more careful, not less.  Never less.

His shoulders relaxed.  His chest moved as he drew in a deep breath.  The panic was releasing its hold on him, but not for a minute did I think this was the end of it.  No, this was just the beginning.

I turned my chin toward Bryce who was hovering by the door.  “You can let the doctor in.”  I told Trowa, “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

That’s what we did.  Six hours later, with my leg stitched for travel and re-bandaged, Trowa curled up in the seat next to mine and Howard nudged us into the atmosphere.  

I kept a white, plastic bag of tape, gauze, pain meds, and a pair of scissors hooked over the edge of my seat’s armrest as Trowa dozed with his head on my shoulder.  Thankfully, Bodrick, Bryce, and the others were out of view, giving us the illusion of privacy.  I appreciated that as much as I appreciated the fact they were still here.  Just in case Trowa needed another dose of tough love.

Tough love.  I’d never known anything like what Tro and the captain had.  It had seemed so cruel in the hospital room: yanking Trowa out of my arms and barking orders at him, forcing him to cut away the bandage and face what he’d done to me.  But I couldn’t deny that it had helped snap him out of that terrifying trance.

Trowa managed to sleep through the entire flight, rousing when we landed at Heathrow for an immigration official to inspect our passports.

“Will you stay?” I asked the captain.  “For a few days?”

He agreed.  Howard flew us out to the airstrip in Colchester and drove us all to the house.  It took two trips in the Mercedes sedan.  Trowa slumped in his seat and stared out the window, angled away from me in sullen misery.  I made him help me out of the car and be my human crutch.  Maybe I was rudely ignoring the guys that I’d asked to be here, but Trowa needed to know why.

He held himself steady as I lowered myself to the sofa on the first floor, the one on which I’d kissed his warm neck, his firm chest, his straining cock until he’d come in my mouth on a pleading moan.  I kept a grip on his shoulders, refusing to let him go until I said my piece:

“I need you.”

He flinched, looking into my eyes for the first time since before I’d forced him to lie down with me in the hospital in Japan.

“I need you to help me get through this.  I’ve—”  I stopped, fought against the clenching of my jaw, and forced the rest of it out.  “I’ve got to say good-bye to them before I can go home with you.”

He seemed surprised by that.  “You still want to?  You want me to—?”

“I want you.”  I’d told him this before — over an international call from my computer desk chair; sliding our naked skin against each other’s in my bed for the first time, my hair loose; in the hall outside of prom, wearing a borrowed tuxedo — and I’d keep on reminding him for as long as I had to.

“I need you.  So much.  Right now,” I confessed.  “But you need them.”

He shook his head.  “I’m fine.”

I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close for a chaste kiss.  “Baby, neither one of us are fine.”

He swallowed thickly; I watched his Adam’s apple roll with it.

“Let them help you so that you can help me?”

He sighed, lowered his head so that our brows touched.  “Duo.  Something—something broke—in me.  In the darkness.  I knew I was going to die and then, suddenly, you were there, telling me what I needed to hear to help me let go.”

I shook him.  Hard.  “That,” I snapped.  “That right there is __wrong!__   It would never happen, Trowa.  Do you know why?  Do you?”

He shook his head, mute and gaping at the fury that I was barely able to push words through.

I told him the most basic facet of my life, the cornerstone of my existence, my biggest weakness and greatest strength: “Because I would never just let you __let go.”__

His lips quirked.  “Sometimes I forget.”  At my inquiring look, he explained, “That you’re a fighter as well.”

“Damn right I am.”  I reached up and pushed his bangs back from his face so that I could see both of his eyes.  “We’re gonna get through this.”

He sank to his knees between mine and tilted his face up for a kiss.  And kiss him I did.  I could hear Howard giving our guests a tour of the first floor.  Someone quietly pulled the lounge door shut.  I didn’t stop loving his mouth with mine to check who.  They could tease us later.  I could not have cared less.

The fact that the house had been broken into, though, that I did care about.

While Howard dealt with resetting the security codes, he delegated everything else to our guests: I needed a pair of crutches; the shelves were bare in the kitchen; sleeping arrangements would have to be sorted out on the ground floor.

The last point, in particular, was a tricky one.

“Trowa,” the captain argued firmly, “you’ll be better off on a cot of your own.”

“I’m bunking with Duo.”

“Then one of us will have to be in the room with you,” Martins insisted.

Trowa crossed his arms over his chest.  “So be it.”

And I just had no idea what to say to the look in his eyes, his determination to get through this, to do whatever he had to so that it would be safe for him to spend the night next to me again.  No one had to remind me that Trowa could kill me with his bare hands.  I was well aware of this, but I was just as determined to do whatever it took to heal his mind, to give him back his self-control.  If it meant that the guys in his troupe would take shifts watching over us as we cuddled on the pull-out sofa, then that’s what both of us were willing to do.

God knows, I was in no condition to deal with a lethal mercenary in the throes of a panic attack.

Thanks to the pain medication, I was in no condition to deal with much of anything, not even post-raid house clean-up, which pissed me off as much as it left me feeling relieved… with a heaping serving of guilt on the side.

Speaking of guilt, it was time for me to unplug my iPhone from its charger and return one of Hilde’s three dozen messages.

“Where the hell are you?” she shouted, loud enough that I pulled my phone away from my ear with a wince.

“Jeez.  What did I bother calling you for?  I could hear that all the way over here.”

“Where is ‘here’?”

I sighed.  “England.”

“Oh,” she deflated.  “Did something come up with the company?”

What an easy explanation she’d just offered me.  Coward that I was, I took it.  “Yeah.  And then I screwed up my leg—it was just a dumb accident, Hils,” I assured her before she could ask if I’d finally drummed up the courage to go skydiving.

“Is Trowa taking care of you?”

“He is.  It’s all good.”  Or, it would be.  Eventually.  I hoped.  “Anyway, I’ve called the school already.”

“Do you have your books?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want me to stop over at your place and pick them up?  Overnight them to you?”

I bit my lip.  Chances were pretty good that the apartment had been ransacked by Khushrenada goons.  It was going to be tough explaining that one so that it sounded harmless.  And I didn’t want her to nag me about filing a police report that would go nowhere.  “Nah,” I told her.  “I’m up to my eyeballs in company stuff.  I won’t have time.”

“Well, don’t fall too far behind or you won’t—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I cut in with a wince.  “I know.  Hopefully, we’ll be back next week.”  I told her to say “hi” to Dorothy.

Trowa, who was in the middle of unfolding the fold-out sofa bed, added, “And tell her I said dankie—thanks.  For the film.”

It took me a second to figure out what film he was talking about.  When I did— “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

He smiled.  All sly and sexy.  Waggled his brows once.

That fucking video of my dance with Hilde at prom.  Jesus Christ.  

I just sighed and dutifully relayed the message before hanging up.

Using the crutches that Bryce had gone into town for, I hobbled over to the bed to help Trowa twitch the sheets and blankets into place.  After that, I sat down on the edge, already in my sleep shorts and a random T-shirt.  Trowa plopped down next to me with a fat grin and held up his phone, cuing the video that Dorothy had sent him.

I dropped my face into my hands with a groan.  Just as the moonwalk bit came on, I felt Trowa lean in, nuzzle aside the strands of hair to get to my ear and purr, “Lekker swaai.”

There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about the shiver, but at least my powers of scowling were cooperating.  “Don’t provoke the guy with the crutches, buddy.”

“What’s that on?” Bryce demanded of Trowa’s phone as he ducked into the lounge, clearly intending to take first watch tonight.

“Nothing,” I fully expected Trowa to say.

He didn’t.  He handed over his fucking phone with that same fat-cat-got-the-cream grin.

“What are you doing!?” I squeaked.

“Whoa-ho!  Lookit your man go!”  Bryce dived for the hall, Trowa’s phone in hand.  “Hey, Martins!  You gotta see this!”

I shoved Trowa hard enough to knock him off the edge of the bed.  He was laughing too hard to pick himself up off the hardwood floor.  He could damn well sleep there.

When Martins and Bryce entered the lounge doing a very, very badly executed tango, I groaned, “I take it back.  Keep your crazy ass uncles.  I’m not jealous at all.  Jesus.  What was I thinking?”

Trowa leaned his head against my left knee, his warm hand caressing my calf.  “Love me, love my family?” he dared in a playful tone.

Ignoring the middle-aged morons stepping on each other’s booted toes, I peeked at him.  “Damn it,” I capitulated and his hopeful smile blossomed into the most beautiful and brightest beaming grin I’d ever seen.

But he was not beaming at me when the next panic attack hit at two o’clock in the morning.

I woke to the feel of his body shivering against mine.  “Bryce, lights!” I grated out, having eyes only for Trowa, squinting in the sudden lamplight as he blinked again and again against his own fingertips, as if he was trying to prove to himself that he was really awake.

It wasn’t Bryce who’d been dozing in the recliner, but Martins.  I must have missed the shift-change.  “Yo, kid.  On your feet.  C’mon.  Pull your shit together.”

I scrambled for the scissors, held them up, and Martins nodded.  Yet again, Trowa’s shaking hands cut away the gauze so that he could see the wound, the evidence that he really had made it through the other end of that nightmare and shot me.

“We need a code word.  Something,” I insisted the next morning as Trowa offered me a cup of merc-brew coffee.

He looked angry today, so I didn’t tell him everything was all right.  It wasn’t.  He gritted out, “I learned, early on, to sort things out.  Whatever was in my head.  Talk it out.  Cry it out.  Whatever it took.  This, though.  It’s higher grade and I’ve no notion—I can’t suss out how to snap back from this.”

I wasn’t sure being buried alive — being forced to face slow, imminent death — was the sort of thing anyone could just shake off.

“Maybe… if you wrote it down,” I tentatively suggested.

“To make it that much easier to recall,” he summed up bitterly.

“No.  So that I know what I shouldn’t do.  What I shouldn’t say.”  He looked at me and I tried to explain my half-assed idea.  “In the hospital, the more I tried to talk you down, the worse it got.  Maybe I was just feeding the nightmare back to you.  I don’t know.  And I won’t know unless you give me details.”

He nodded.  “All right.”

It took about an hour of furious scribbling and erasing before he finally handed me a sheaf of crumpled papers.  “I’ll go see about lunch,” he said.

I knew that the guys weren’t actually gonna let him cook; he was giving me time to read it in private.  It was a good thing he did.  I could count the number of times I’d cried.   In fact, there were only a half dozen instances that stood out.

The first was when I’d been about five years old and had tumbled off the jungle gym and conked my head on a metal bar.  Solo, probably embarrassed by my screaming fit, had left his friends and their game of kick ball to come over and sneer, “Boys don’t cry, dumb-butt.”

Second: the thirty-six hours after my dad’s will had been read, naming me his successor and sole responsible party for each and every single solitary person to whom the company provided the means of earning a living, supporting their family, and preparing for their future.

The third had been the night of prom.

Number four had happened in the cave on Sakhalin as Khushrenada had threatened bodily harm to the man I loved.

Fifth: in Aokigahara as I’d knelt at the true gateway, terrified shitless for Trowa.

And most recently in the hospital a few days ago, when I’d been doped up to my eyeballs, mindlessly terrified of losing Trowa’s trust, and then overwhelmed with relief when he’d declared his intent to stay with me, to rebuild our life together.

And now here was the seventh as I read Trowa’s narrative.  His writing skills really did suck, but misspellings and run-on sentences did absolutely nothing to distract me from the sheer devastation he’d faced in that darkness.  Alone with only his memories of me.  Familiar hallucinations.  Gentle words and fond memories.  Lost hopes and dreams.  Terror and failure and helplessness.

Jesus.

I didn’t bump into anyone on my way to the downstairs bathroom to wash up.  Thank God.  The last thing Trowa needed to see was how destroyed I was.  How furious I was that his mind had taken our moments — our happiness and discoveries — and turned them into raw fear.

Later that night, when Trowa gasped awake, I didn’t call out for our watcher to hit the lights.

I said sharply, “Hey!  Trowa!  What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?”

A moment went by.  I held my breath.  Finally, he rasped, “I—I don’t know.”  His confusion was painful.  “What?” he begged, clearly unsettled by the fact that his mind couldn’t supply an answer to the riddle.

“Oh.  ‘Dam.’”

I waited for it — just like Bodrick was probably waiting for it with his hand poised on the switch of the table lamp — and then Trowa slumped back against the squeaky mattress on a wet cough of laughter.

“Get over here,” I ordered.  “I got a T-shirt that could use some snot spots on it.”

He laughed again, but he rolled into my arms and pressed his wet cheeks to my offered T-shirt.  I grabbed his shoulder, skimmed my palm down his arm and guided his hand to the gauze on my thigh.

“I shot you,” he whispered.

“You sure did,” I agreed.

“Those moegoes got me out and I came after you and I shot you.”

“First, last, and only time, Barton,” I informed him in a tone that was almost hard.

He sighed happily and damned if he didn’t drift off to sleep right there, draped over my chest.  The leather of the reclining armchair creaked as our watcher went back to his nap.  I grinned up at the ceiling in the dark, my arms around Trowa’s shoulders and filled with a sense of victory.

Which meant that it was my turn to face down a demon or two.  When Trowa held out my jacket to me after breakfast, I knew what was about to happen.  He was practically glowing today — it was amazing what a good night’s sleep and cranking open a can of whoop ass on a night terror could do — and I didn’t have it in me to refuse him.  So I shrugged into the armholes, grabbed my crutches, and headed out to the car.  Trowa drove us down the lane.  The trees created a tunnel of greenery and I ached with regret at the leisurely walk we were missing out on.  Besides, it would have postponed the confrontation that was on our itinerary.

He pulled up beside the small cemetery.  Parked.  I didn’t move.

“Duo,” he reminded me softly.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”  I’d told him I needed him for this.  And I did.  I just wasn’t sure there was enough of me to survive it.  The pain and rage had been holding me together for more than ten years.  If I just let it all go, if that was even possible, would I, Duo Maxwell, even still exist?

I asked, “Do you think… are people the sum of their pasts?”

“Duo!”

I jumped, shocked by the anger in his voice.

“Since when have you ever considered me the sum of my past?  Or am I nothing more than a merc to you after all?”

“Of course not!”  He was right.  But—“But… I’ve been this way—I mean, who am I without—”  I stopped.  Took a deep breath.  Got my shit together.  “I’ve been carrying this around longer than you’ve known me.  And you fell in love with me.  What if that changes?”

“Duo,” he said again and I needed a moment before I had the courage to look at him.

“Yeah?”

“Stop being a chop.”  He smiled.

I smiled back.  “A karate chop?”

He shook his head.

“A chop shop?”

Another shake.

“A lamb chop?  Pork chop?  Chop-chop?”

He leaned over and kissed me.  Probably just to shut me up.  Then he got out of the car and grabbed my crutches from the backseat.  OK.  This was happening.  I’d just about convinced myself I was ready by the time he opened my door.

I levered myself out of the bucket seat and tucked the crutches under my arms.  My moments of dizziness were long gone: I was a pro at this now.  That didn’t mean I was eager to get shot again, but I was kind of proud of myself for the progress I’d manged.  So far.  Although, today might just end up putting a serious dent in my self-confidence.

I took another deep breath and pointed myself in the direction of the headstones.  Slowly, I made my approach.  Trowa shadowed me.

Stopping in front of their graves, I stared down at the engravings and waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.  I felt the cool breeze.  It was the last week of April but like hell that mattered here.  It was cloudy, threatening rain.  Leaves rustled in the trees.  After ten of the longest, most silent minutes in my life, I huffed out a breath and admitted, “I don’t know how to do this.”

Trowa nodded.  He turned to face me, studied me until I mirrored his stance.

“You never speak about your family as if they’re dead.”

I blinked, surprised.

He continued, “It’s as if your dad’s away on business and your brother’s off to school.”

I had no reply to that.

“Do you remember when we met?  I asked how you knew Chopin and you said that your mom used to play it on the piano.”

I did remember.  “You asked me how come she stopped.”

“And you said she was dead.”  He paused.  Let me absorb that.

I recalled that moment.  Even as I’d said it, I hadn’t felt the loss.  It was like she’d taken off for another dig site to uncover lost secrets and forgotten legacies.  Not that she’d been… y’know.  It was all too easy to see the logic of the association.  The simple wordplay that my mind had accepted: my mom was in a tomb.  My imagination had eagerly supplied the rest and I’d gleefully assumed that she was off doing what she loved: deciphering the messages from the ancients by the light of a flashlight in the darkness.

Holy shit.  Was that why I’d clung to archaeology all these years?  I was still hoping to brush aside a layer of sediment and find some message from her meant just for me?

Oh, God.  I was still searching for her.  That moment in Laos at Wat Dong Sao when I’d read my name on the stones and scooped up Solo’s iPod — I’d been waiting years for that moment of connection.  Proof that she wasn’t really gone forever.  Just elsewhere.  Just beyond my reach.  Standing in the shadows beyond the corner of my eye.  If I just looked hard enough, if I just figured out where to look, I’d find her again.

I closed my stinging eyes, swayed.

Trowa curled a hand around my arm, steadying me.

No wonder I’d had no trouble talking about her at Professor Merquise’s dig site.  In my mind, she and Solo had been lurking around those tombs and, for a single reason that I hadn’t let myself consider closely, our paths simply hadn’t crossed.

When I opened my eyes, the leafy canopy overhead was blurry.

Trowa’s hand didn’t move.  He pressed, “Then I asked where your brother was.”

I ducked my head, already knowing the answer to this prompt: “I told you he was with my mom.”

Trowa was so totally right: I didn’t think about my family as if they were—I mean, it was like they were all just too busy to bother with me and not—

“Are they still alive,” Trowa asked, placing his other hand over my chest, “here?”

I nodded.

“That’s all right, then.”

“It is?”  I was confused.

He shrugged.  “You just have to make room for them.”

 _ _How?__   I didn’t ask.  Trowa read it in my face.

“Let go of the pain, the anger.”

But then what would I have?  “Let go,” I repeated with a sarcastic drawl.  “Let go of the shit I can actually control.  Sure thing.  Once I do that, I’ll have a whole lotta—”

“Peace,” he whispered and I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him.  Not that tone.  Not that look.  “There’s peace in wake of all that.  I know, Duo.  I __know.”__

He did.  I’d seen him cry before.  Just last night, when he’d realized that the nightmare was over with.  When he’d figured out that he was stronger than the tricks his mind was trying to play on him in the dark.  True, it’d only been one night, but it was an encouraging start.

But there had been other times I’d witnessed this miracle technique of his.  He’d bled out his frustration and pain as he’d helped me brush and braid my hair in Vientiane.  I’d heard him sniffle over the phone when I’d confessed the depths of my feelings for him.  Whenever Tro was overwhelmed, he cried it out.  He was the steadiest person I’d ever known, so that pretty much made him an expert.

“What do I do?”

“Close your eyes,” he coached, and I did.  “Think about your dad.  What would the two of you be doing right now if he were alive?”

I swallowed thickly.  “Uh, probably arguing about how much coffee I’d had this morning.”

Trowa’s hands moved to my shoulders.  “He can’t argue with you anymore, Duo.  You’ve lost that.”

Shit.  I gritted my teeth.

“Shh,” he soothed.  “Let the pain out, Duo.  Let it go.”

It hurt worse than I could have imagined, but I did it.  My eyes burned and hot tears squeezed out from between my lashes.  I sobbed out a series of breaths until the searing pressure relented.  But Trowa wasn’t done yet.  In fact, we’d just gotten started.

“And what if your brother had lived?”

“He’d probably be tr–trying to hide my cr–crutches and trip me every—every chance he got.”

“And what would your mom have told him?”

“To stop being a p–pest and pass me the—the TV remote.”

Trowa didn’t have to tell me that I’d never have those moments.  They were gone.

He asked, “Do you think your brother and I would have gotten along?”

“Probably not.  But I—I woulda loved to w–watch you kick his ass.”  This I said, smiling through my tears.

He leaned me toward his chest and I tilted my head against his shoulder.  He mused, “That would have been a real jol.”

“It would have!” I sobbed.  His warm arms held me up as I cried for that lost moment.  “I bet it w–would’ve gone viral on YouTube.”

Trowa pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

“And my mom woulda freaked—out over the—fact that neither one of us can—cook.”

“I would have liked to have taken cooking lessons from your mom.”

I sucked in an unsteady breath.  “Me—me, too.”

I don’t know how many tears I cried.  I lost track of how many times I let Trowa crack open my heart.  There was no way to know how many moments I would never be allowed with my family: how many fights Solo and I would never have, how many kisses my mom wouldn’t force on me, how many jokes my dad would never laugh at with me.

All of that was gone.

Because they were dead.

“That sonuvabitch,” I panted into Trowa’s collar.  At some point, he’d hooked an arm through both of my crutches.  I was clinging to him, just him.  “I wish he could die a thousand times over—!”

“Duo, bokkie,” he soothed, “don’t.  This isn’t about him.  Don’t fill your heart up with hate.  Not for his sake.  He’s not worth it.”

I tried to laugh.  “Yeah, well.  You’re right.  What kind of loser offers his future husband a hate-filled heart?”

Trowa groaned softly.  “Duo.  Don’t—”

I lifted my face up to his and glared his protest away.  My eyes were probably red and puffy, my nose runny, my mouth slimy; oh yeah, I was totally working the formidable swamp monster angle.

“I mean it,” I told him.  “If you—if you still want—me.”  Considering how my sinuses had more or less just turned into Mount Kilauea, there was a good chance he was re-thinking this “forever” business.

His hands tightened on my waist.  “It’s too late for me to let you go.”

“Yeah?” I checked, feeling tears trip over my lashes for a completely different set of reasons now.

He nodded, his own eyes gleaming.  “Yah,” he said in a voice that was husky with emotion.  “Just gone three years, four months.”

“About time I noticed, huh?”

He pulled me close.  I felt his head nod against mine.  I held on tight and looked down at the gravestones.  It still hurt — it hurt so much — to force myself to think about everything I’d lost.  But somehow it felt right to offer Trowa my future here, now, like this.  If I couldn’t fill my heart with hate, then maybe I could fill it with hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mount Fuji isn't technically open for hiking to the summit as early as this. Generally, the hiking season is something like July through the mid-September(-ish) but there are plenty of trails on the lower slopes that are open just about all year round. Aokigahara would definitely be a possible hiking destination in April.


	28. Graduation Day, Part 2 (Trowa POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trowa POV
> 
> Notes: I’ve edited Graduation Day, Part 1 for a few typos and a consistency thing. Just FYI.
> 
> ALSO, this chapter contains lotsa lotsa man smut. If you'd prefer to skip it, you can read the version I've posted of this chapter on fanfiction.net
> 
> Music: “Wherever This Goes” by The Fray

When Howard offered the troupe a ride back to Lagos, the captain looked to me and I nodded.  I was steady now.  I was ready to move forward.  They’d given me their best and now it was up to me to do the rest.

Howard filed a flight plan for the following afternoon.  

I was equal parts sad and relieved to see them go.

Sad because, without them, I’d have likely gone bossies in those first few days as my mind trapped me in that small, dark box deep in the ground over and over again.  They’d had my back until Duo had schemed up a way to get me through the night and, though I had absolutely no regrets about leaving the troupe behind to be with Duo in the first place, I had missed those ooms.  And not just because I’d been one out against Khushrenada’s men for the last four months.

But I was also relieved to see them off because, if they stayed any longer, I really would go bossies.

The morning they were due to head out, Duo received handshakes from Wallace and Kask that were exuberant enough to test his balance on his crutches.  

Bryce gave a go at imitating my kerel’s coaster moves on the dance floor, but Duo just rolled his eyes and told him to keep at it… if he wanted to give a pack of starving hyenas a bloody good skrik.

I laughed.

Martins offered Duo a high-five.

The captain clapped a hand on Duo’s shoulder and told me, “You hit a luck with this one.”

“Actually,” Duo argued back, his gaze on me, “I hit a luck with him.”

That night, though, I had to wonder about it when Duo grabbed for my frantically searching hands, my fingers curled and clawing at the imaginary walls of my dark prison, and he barked out, “Why is the number six afraid of the number seven?”

The sound of his voice — it was Duo, but it was too loud.  Too brash.  This was not the Duo who comforted me as I waited for my air to run out and the hallucinations-suffocation-death to overtake me.

My mind stuttered.  My brain worked at the puzzle of his words.  I ought to know this — if this wasn’t real, if it was all in my head, then I should know this.  Why didn’t I?  I gasped, confused and disoriented, “What?  I—is it —wh–why?”

He told me, matter-of-factly, “’Cuz seven ‘ate’ nine.”

He was quiet then.  Very quiet.  Holding my hands too tightly until—

The meaning hit me, surprised me, shocked me out of my fear, and I groaned.  “That was mal.”

“Hell yeah,” he agreed gleefully.  “It was real bad.”   The point, however, was that it had been _real._

While Howard was on his run south, Duo and I sorted out the mess that Khushrenada’s men had left in the private areas of the house.  The two offices were nearly the worst.  It took all of Duo’s focus and strength to pull himself up the stairs and take on the scattered papers and torn record books.  I sorted out the shattered photo frames and scraps of upholstery cloth.  It took us all morning and a bit to finish up just those two rooms.

When Duo looked up, contemplating the top floor of the manor, I suggested that we both take a rest.  I couldn’t bear to tell him that his old room on the top floor had been completely destroyed.

Somehow, perhaps because she’d been left on the mantle piece in the nearby sitting room, Mildred, the wooden crocodile skeleton, had been spared.  I brought her down to the ground floor lounge and Duo smiled.

“Moral support, huh?”

“I’ll stay as well,” I offered, spying the number on the screen of his phone that he had yet to dial: his father’s secretary in New York.

He crooked a finger at me and I leaned closer, receiving a soft kiss for my efforts.  “Nah,” he breathed.  “I gotta be a boss-man.  It might freak you out.”

“But Mildred is all right?”" I pressed.

He shrugged.  “We’ll see how she takes it first.”

“Goof,” I told him, gave him a kiss in return, and let myself out of the room.  I had a shopping list in one hand and car keys in the other, but I hesitated outside the lounge door.

“Hello.  This is Dominic Maxwell,” he announced in a tone that I recognized.  Firm.  Authoritative.  Lord Victor Maxwell at the dig site in Egypt.

There was a pause.

“Well, then, put me in touch with whoever is available at the moment.”

Another pause.

“Good afternoon, Mister Ruthford.  This is Dominic Maxwell.  I just got your message.  What did you wish to discuss?”

I waited a bit longer.

“My whereabouts are not the subject of this discussion.  If you don’t have any concerns or issues that I can help you with aside from that, I’ll get on with my day.”

A toppie, indeed.  Dominic Maxwell, though only eighteen years old, was a force to be reckoned with.

I went to the shop, returned and stocked the kitchen, then I found myself looking in on an empty ground floor lounge.  I tried his mobile number and, on the third ring, he answered, “Hey, babe.  I’m in my dad’s office.”

“I’ll be up now-now,” I promised and followed the sound of electronic whirs and beeps to the desk where Duo sat, mobile pressed to his ear as the dusty fax machine spat out printed page after printed page.

“Yes, I’m looking at it right now,” he told the person on the other end of the line – the person he’d put on hold to answer my call – and promised, “It’ll be signed and sent out as soon as the courier makes it out here.  Fine.  Yes, you can reach me at this number.  Thank you.”

Duo hung up with a heavy sigh and promptly asked with a disarming smile, “How was your venture into the outside world?”

“Uneventful without you,” I teased just to make him laugh, which he did.

His grin faded as he bit down on his lip and asked, “Are you starting to get workout withdrawal?”

I didn’t inquire as to why he was asking.  I skipped right on to— “What do you need, bokkie?”

He sighed.  “I need a gopher and I’m really sorry I have to ask—”

“A gopher?”  I was not familiar with the term.

“Someone to run and get the door when the delivery dudes show up and sign for shit, and then after I’ve read and signed the shit, run and get the door when the delivery dudes show up again and I’m ready to send the shit back.”

He looked so miserable at having to ask that I couldn’t help but laugh.  I pushed my shirt sleeves up and bragged, “If there’s a jar of peanut butter you need opened as well, I’m your man.”

Duo flopped back in his chair and laughed hard.  “If all it takes is a peanut butter jar, I think I can find one around here somewhere.”

“Howsit?”

He glanced away from my puzzled frown, bashful and uncertain.  “Nothing.  Never mind.  I’ll check with the London office about the courier service they use and—thanks for… thanks, Trowa.”

I reached for his mobile before he could place the call.  In the midst of his rambling, I’d sussed out what he meant.  “Don’t be doff, bokkie.”  He looked up and I lifted my fingers to his face, brushing the pad of my thumb over his lips.  “I’m mos yours.”

It was little moments like these that reminded me of how much I loved him.  Just as I was reminded of the shaky footing we were on with each other, not because we didn’t know where we’d been or where we were now or even where we were headed; what we didn’t know was how we were going to get there.

“You up for a sarmie?” I offered.

“If that’s food,” he replied, “the answer is ‘hell yeah,’ and if that’s something we can be naked for, the answer is ‘hell yeah to infinity’.”

I kissed him softly, charmed by his wishful thinking.  He wouldn’t be jagging for weeks, not with that gunshot wound.  I knew this from experience.  “It’s food.”  Then I gave him a tuning because I knew he needed the reassurance that the illusion would provide, “But if you’re keen to chow some graze in the nude, I won’t stop you.”

He pouted.  “You’re evil.”

I gave him a wide grin on my way out the door.  From the hall, I heard him sigh as he put the call through to the London office.  I did not envy him the chore of fielding the very same questions he’d gotten from the New York staff about his current location and recent disappearance, so I added a cup of coffee and some Oreo cookies to his plate hoping it would wring out a bit of his frustration.  Regardless, the sugar and caffeine couldn’t hurt.  Not if the intel I’d gathered on Americans was accurate.

It looked like it was: following our late lunch, Duo attacked the stack of faxes with a pen that had escaped damage by rolling under the edge of the bookcase, slashing out clauses and jotting down notes, even signing some documents without additional conditions attached.  Then I ran the packets down to the front door when the courier pulled up.  In the end, I had to ring Duo on my mobile so he could instruct the deliveryman on the details.

Thanks to a plentiful stack of frozen dinners, I sorted out our next meal.  After I heard Howard’s car drive up and park next to his cottage, I hauled the bulging bags of office debris down to the ground level for him to advise me on their disposal.  Whenever he got around to it.

By the time the slop-wearing oke recovered from his flights, the house looked much like it had when I’d first seen it.  Except for Duo’s room on the top floor, of course.  I did the best I could, but even my skills at repairs didn’t extend to torn team pennants, shredded comic books, or smashed terrariums.  I packed the damaged items up as carefully as I could.  I cleaned up the glass and other bits that had been crushed beneath boot tread.  Then I closed the door on it.  Some day, when Duo was ready to face it, he would.

I did the same with Solo’s old room which was, unsurprisingly, at the exact opposite end of the hall.  I couldn’t help but wonder if Duo and Solo might have been friends one day.  Or if their adversarial relationship would have continued on.  And if so, how it would have pushed and pulled and molded them.

But as I was more than happy with the current version of Duo Maxwell, it was merely idle speculation.

By the end of the week, Duo had caught up on the work he’d missed.  If Khushrenada’s men hadn’t destroyed both Lord and Lady Maxwell’s computers, things might have gone faster, but neither Duo nor I were in a rush.  Our ghosts were certainly taking their time releasing their hold on us.

Half the time, when I looked in on Duo, he was on the phone, being a toppie.  The other half of the time, he was crying into his shirt sleeves.  I’d sit with him regardless.  Accept it.  Just as he accepted my nightly terror.

Every night.

I had no memory beyond the metal box.  I was trapped — Khushrenada’s mercs had knocked me out, dumped me in here, buried me — and now I was counting every breath, clinging to Duo’s soft words in the darkness, waiting for death.

And then— “Trowa!”

I was gasping, sucking air in until my lungs hurt.  My fingers were clawing at my face — were my eyes open?  I had to conserve my air —  _Duo needs me now-now_  — how was I going to get to him?  How long had it been — how much time did I have left?  I reached for Duo to help me forget that it was hopeless-hopeless- _hopeless—!_

“What do you call a duck with fangs?” he suddenly quizzed me, his hands tight around my wrists as I leaned heavily against his side.  He was warm—so much warmer than I expected in the cold aluminium bakkie box.

I panted in the darkness, clinging to his nonsensical words.   _Think, Barton!  Think!_   A duck with fangs—what was he on about?

“C’mon, babe.  Gimme your best shot.  What do you call a duck with fangs?”

I focused and, as I did, the panic was pushed back.  Finally, I had enough control of my mouth, voice, and lungs, to suggest, “A fuck?”

His guffaw startled me.  Scattered the remnants of my fear and I slumped against him gratefully.  He looped an arm over my shoulders and giggled, “D’you think we can order one of those the next time we go for Chinese takeout?”

“What if it’s not on the menu?” I challenged mildly, my heart rate beginning to slow.

“It’s on _my_ menu,” he teased, and I imagined him waggling his brows in the dark.

“Goof.”  I sighed out a hot breath against his T-shirt.  “What __do__ you call a duck with fangs?”

“Count Quacula.”

I paused.  Grimaced and snorted.  “Mine was—”

“A lot better.  Yeah, yeah.  Rub it in, why doncha?”

Meanwhile, he was rubbing my back and I let him soothe me back to sleep.  It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized I hadn’t had to reach for the gauze wrapping on his thigh; I’d trusted Duo’s voice — his doff joke and playful banter — to be more real than the bakkie chest.

“You boys ready to head home and face the music?” Howard wanted to know the next day at breakfast.  Duo’s hand hesitated briefly as he reached for the bag of Oreo cookies.  The cup of double-dirty coffee in my hand froze halfway to my lips.

Our gazes met and I knew Duo and I were thinking the exact same thing: the music room.  What had Khushrenada’s men done to Lady Maxwell’s piano?

Duo cleared his throat.  “Ready or not, the world keeps on turning.”

I sat my cup down and reached across the tabletop for his hand.  His grip was hard.  His knuckles white.  So were mine.  How much of our life in New York — how much of Duo’s memories of his family — had we lost?

We soon found out.  Given Duo’s continued need for crutches, Howard flew us back to the States.  We arrived on a Friday afternoon.  We rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor.  Duo unlocked the door.  We didn’t go inside.  We just stared at the utter devastation from the threshold.  I pulled the door shut and wrapped Duo up in my arms.  I called Sally.  She and Miles came upstairs with an unopened packet of extra-strength garbage bags.  They sacrificed their weekend for us, helped us toss out the broken dishes, unsalvageable appliances, and slashed linens.

Pausing at the door to Duo’s room —  _our_  room — I nudged him down the hall.  “I’ve got this one,” I told him.  “Tell Sally and Miles what’s what in the others.”

He was too exhausted and heartsick to argue with me.  No one went near the music room.  Duo and I would handle that.  Later.

Miles arranged for special garbage pick-up for the larger items.  We would need a new living room sofa and coffee table.  A new television and stereo.  A new home computer.  A new mirror in the bathroom.  And so on.  The mattress in Solo’s old room was in the best condition, so that was where we slept that first night.

The next morning, after a stop at McDonald’s, Duo and I paid a visit to a mattress shop.  He walked past all the twin beds — beds the same size as the one in his old room — and flopped down on an inviting-looking queen-size.

“What do you think?” he asked, wiggling a bit.

I laid down next to him.

“Too soft?” he checked.

I shook my head.  I didn’t give rocks how soft the bed was so long as it was ours.

“We’ll take this one,” he informed the saleswoman as she stepped up to ask if we needed any assistance.  Startled by Duo’s decisiveness, she invited us to the customer service counter to complete the sale.

Sitting beside him, accommodatingly holding onto his crutches as he filled out the delivery form, I reminded him of a detail he may have neglected to take into account, “A bed this size won’t fit in your old room.”

He nodded.  “Yeah.  I know.  I thought this might be a good time to upgrade.”

Upgrade.  He wasn’t just talking about mattresses and bedrooms.

He slid the paper across the sales counter and turned to ask me point blank, “If I promise to let you have half the closet space, d’you think we can make it work?”

I grinned.  “I don’t need half the bloody closet.”

Duo gave me a playful look.  “Well, you don’t have to use it for clothes.”

I snorted.

The bed was delivered the next day.  We spent all day Sunday boxing up Victor Maxwell’s things and moving them into Solo’s old room.  Then we moved our things into the master bedroom.

Sometimes, Duo cried.

Every night, I woke us both with my terror.

Somehow, when Monday morning rolled around, we were back in the kitchen, drinking siff instant coffee from two of our remaining coffee mugs, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table.  Duo’s sock-clad foot rubbed over mine.

I smiled at him over the table, which had been spared.  Two of its chairs had not.  But that was fine; the remaining two would be enough to suit our needs.

“After school today, let’s go buy a sofa,” he suggested.

“It’s a date,” I said, and then I drove him to his lessons.

When I pulled up outside the front entrance, he shrugged his way out of the car and returned the waves from Hilde and Dorothy from where they stood on the top step.  I fetched his crutches from the backseat and shut the door while he was getting settled and sorted out.  Then he looked into my eyes and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

My heart stuttered.  I felt myself leaning in before I could get my mouth to work.  “Anytime, bokkie.  Anyplace,” I told him.

His eyes sparkled with happiness and then his lips were brushing mine, his lush mouth opening and kissing me deeply enough to send shock waves of heat rolling through me.  I lifted my hands to cradle his face; I held him steady as he led.  Around the car, students were milling, moving, meandering toward the steps.  Duo kissed me until I groaned for him to stop.

“Save some of that for me for later,” I whispered.

“You got it, babe,” he answered on a slow grin.  “Have a good day.”

Considering how far behind both of us were on our studies, I should have argued the point with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to summon the pessimism.  Not in the wake of the amazing event that had just taken place.

I leaned back against the car as he made his way up the school steps, ignoring Hilde’s catcalls and Dorothy’s smug applause.  I waited until the three of them disappeared into the throng, then I slid behind the wheel and pulled away.  My tingling lips stretched in a beaming smile.

Marie May noticed.

“I take it you had a good time on your honeymoon,” she teased.

“Spring training camp,” Odin corrected her, more determined than ever to turn every bloody thing into a sports analogy.

I shrugged.  “We survived.”  And that was all I could let myself say about it.

That afternoon, with a mountain of textbooks and assignments piled on the backseat, I waited for Duo to emerge from the front doors of the school.  Hilde exited before he did.  She was clearly struggling to juggle two packs and the door handle while she held the door open for him and I could tell by the tightness in his shoulders that his day had been as long as mine.  Perhaps longer.  I locked the car and fought against the tide of students to reach them before Duo had to begin navigating the steps.

“Duo’s satchel,” I ordered of Hilde, slinging the heavy pack over my shoulder.  Then I took up position on Duo’s other side, forming a barrier between him and careless teenagers so intent on making it to their vehicles that they didn’t care who they jostled in the process.

We made it to the car.  I took Duo’s crutches as he slumped into the passenger seat.

Hilde’s hand on my arm stopped me from rounding the front of the car.  “Some jock assholes tripped Duo today at lunchtime.  He’s been hurting ever since, but he wouldn’t go see the nurse.”

I swore.  Then I thanked her.

I got into the car and held off on starting the engine.  Duo sighed, irritably.  “Hilde told you all about it already.”

“Do you need to see a physician?”

He looked at me and something he saw in my expression surprised him.  “Naw.  I’m not bleeding.  I checked.”

I nodded, acknowledging the information.  “The same two boykies as before?” I asked, my fingers curling tighter around the steering wheel.

“Trowa.”

I stopped glaring at the uniformed student body swirling through the car park and met his eyes.

He flipped a tube of Bostick at me.  “I took care of it.”

I arched a brow.

He confessed, “On the way back to class from using the restroom, someone may have glued the combination lock on their lockers in place.”

“Aren’t there video cameras in the halls?”

Duo shrugged.  “They can bill me.”  He smiled at me and said, “So, whaddya say we hit Taco Bell before we start the sofa hunt?”

Somehow, we managed to find a sofa that looked just like the one that Khushrenada’s men had slashed up and torn apart.  As Duo and I stood side by side in the store, gazing at the thing, I felt his fingers brush my hand.  My sidelong gaze met his and our lips quirked as memories of more than one afternoon spent rolling our hips together, mouths moving over each other’s, hot breaths panting, and hands delving beneath bunched-up clothing came back to us.

Fifteen minutes later, Duo’d completed the purchase and delivery arrangements.

Item by item, the apartment was restored.  Little by little, we battled through the stack of homework assignments.  I met with Sally three afternoons a week.  The company commanded our time on Wednesday and Friday afternoons and all day on Saturdays.

By mid-May, Duo started leaving the crutches by the front door of the apartment.  My night terrors lessened in frequency, though never in intensity.

Then Duo announced that this coming Friday was his last day of school.

I tilted my head against his on the sofa.  “Congratulations, bokkie.”

His hand squeezed my thigh and I felt a thrill of lust arc through me like a shock of electricity and I wanted—

No.  Not yet.

I distracted myself with thoughts of all the lessons — a full week’s wroth — ahead of me yet.  Then a week off for what was called “self-study” and then I’d be taking that fokken GED exam for the sake of some larny piece of paper that was supposed to make my life a jol.

“I can give you a ride to school tomorrow,” Duo offered.

I glanced down at his leg, at the scar that was still forming.  “Give it a little more time?”

His hand turned, offering his palm to me and I placed mine in his grasp.  He relented, “Only ‘cuz it’s you asking.”

Neither of us were talking only about driving.  Just this morning, I’d woken up to the feel of Duo’s hard length pressing against my hip for the second time in the past week.  As badly as I wanted to make love to him, I continued to put him off.  Partly because I did not want him to get hurt — a muscle cramp would be especially excruciating until he was completely recovered — but also because there was a thoughtful air about him that had never been there before.  I hadn’t yet asked him about it; I was waiting for him to volunteer.  I couldn’t stand the thought of having him in my arms, skin on skin, with a barrier separating us.  I kissed him.  I held him.  And I waited for him to reveal his thoughts.  With each passing day, I sensed that the invisible wall was thinning.

“Are you coming to commencement?” he asked a week later on the following Friday evening.

“A whatsit?”

“My graduation ceremony,” he explained.  “It’s tomorrow afternoon.  I gotta go, but you don’t—”

“Of course I’m going.  Mos ja.”

He smiled.  “Yeah?  Okay.  Thanks.”

I didn’t understand why he’d thanked me until I found myself seated among mothers and fathers, younger and older siblings, grandparents.  Graduations were a family event.  My heart squeezed tight in my chest: I was Duo’s only family.  He still shouldn’t have had to thank me for coming today.  It was no bother.  It was an honor.

There was ceremonial music, stuffy and pompous.  A procession of cap-and-gowned students.  Duo hadn’t needed his crutches at all for the last week and a bit, so I was reduced to scanning the sea of bodies for his distinctive length of hair.  Before I found it, they all sat and the school principal stepped up to the podium on the stage.

“Class of 2013,” he began, and I endured five minutes of some nonsense about coming of age.  It was laughable in Duo’s case.  He was already head of an international corporation.

“And now I give you your class valedictorian, Dominic Maxwell.”

There was a round of polite applause as one seated individual stood and made his way to the stage.  Finally, I could make out his long hair, pulled back with bands.  Formal-style.  I was unfamiliar with the term that the principal had used in reference to him.  Ignoring the glares from my seat neighbors, I dug my mobile out of my pocket and Googled “valedictorian.”

And when I read the definition—

I gasped, looking up sharply and watching as Duo finished shaking the principal’s hand.  He then removed a packet of slightly crumpled papers from a pocket within his gown.  He tossed them on top of the podium.  He stared at them and his fingers twitched, but he didn’t unfold them and begin reading.

The man sitting on my right shifted.  So did several other people in the audience.  The tension mounted.

And then Duo spoke.  “To tell you the truth, I don’t feel one hundred percent ready for this,” his voice was warm, a friendly confession.  “But it’s time.”

He took a deep breath and told us all, “I wrote a speech for this.  Principal Pargan checked it.”  At this, he lifted the folded pages.  “He even gave me a smiley face.”  Duo unfolded the pages and pointed to where this mark of approval supposedly was.  Most were too far away to see it, but I caught a circle of red ink.  Duo waggled his brows beneath his cap as the principal nodded in confirmation and a few people chuckled.  Duo continued, “So it must be a pretty good speech.  But I’m not gonna read it to you because, well, it’s kinda boring.”

He laid it down to the top of the podium.  Before Principal Pargan could do more than twitch in his seat, Duo braced his hands on the edges of the podium and got on with it.  He didn’t lean toward the microphone.  He didn’t need to.  His next words were spoken with conviction; there was no corner of the auditorium where they didn’t resonate.

“Instead, I wanna talk to you about the big picture.”

He cleared his throat.  “The big picture.  What does that even mean?  Until recently, I thought it was just about the future.  The path ahead.  But it’s more than that.  It’s taking a good, long, hard look at your life and realizing you don’t get to be a brat because life isn’t fair.”

He rocked back on his heels before straightening.  “On Sundays, I go and sit on a metal folding chair in a circle inside a church and talk about my dad, my mom, and my brother.”

My throat ached; I’d never been prouder of Duo than the day he’d asked me if I’d drive him to grief counseling.  Except, perhaps, the next week when he’d made the same request even though we’d both known that he’d be coming back to the car after the hour-long meeting with his face smeared with tears and his cheeks splotchy from crying.

“The big picture,” Duo continued, “means learning to live with death and loss because it’s never going to go away.  It’s about looking into your past and finding balance.  Because you need balance or you’ll never have stable footing for the next step.

“The big picture is about becoming strong enough to pull your own weight.  And that’s not easy.  The big picture is accepting that if that last one is a work in progress for you, then that’s okay.”

Duo cleared his throat again and told the audience, “You might think I’m valedictorian because I like studying or because I’m a hard worker or whatever, but actually that’s not true.  My mom went to this school.  She was valedictorian, and, when she died, I promised myself I’d do this for her.  That might seem like a good reason, but it’s not.  It’s really not.  Because I didn’t have the big picture in mind.

“The big picture isn’t about honoring someone’s memory by achieving the same things they did.  The big picture is a chance meeting in an unlikely place with someone from a completely different walk of life that turns into the best thing you’ve ever known.”  Duo lifted a hand to push aside the swaying tassel hanging over the side of his cap.  The glass ring — the ring I’d given to Duo at an airport — winked in the glare of the June sunlight streaming in through the high windows.

“The big picture is now,” Duo said.  “The world is a big place and, in our society, it’s easy to believe that we’re all less significant than we ought to be: we ought to be better looking, cooler, richer.  We forget that we’re unique.  And I don’t just mean those of us here in this hall, or in this city, or in this country.  Or in the world.  Who knows, right?”  He grinned and speculated with a comical shrug of his shoulders, “They could be out there.”

A couple people laughed, but Duo’s gaze was scanning the audience and I knew the moment he spotted me.  His lips curved and he was suddenly speaking to me.  Just me.  “In the world, there is no one like you.  There has never been anyone like you in all of history and there never will be again.  That’s the big picture.”

He paused to let that sink in before he dug deeper, “But what does it mean?  It means it’s time for us to step up.  We owe it to our teachers, who have done their best to show us how to think for ourselves.  We owe it to our family, who raised us.  We owe it to our friends, who have faith in us.  But, most of all, we owe it to ourselves.  You owe it to yourself.  It’s time to make decisions for yourself, to be yourself.  It’s time to join the big picture.  The world is out there.  Class of 2013, don’t worry about shutting the door behind you on your way out.”

Duo stepped back from the podium and for a moment, there was silence.  And then someone started clapping.  A round of applause, far more boisterous than the initial one, swelled in the hall.  I joined in, heart aching because the sound of my hands didn’t seem to make any difference, and I wanted to make a difference.  But Duo saw and he smiled.  And that made it all right.

Hilde also gave a speech, but what it was about, I couldn’t say.  I was too busy trying to suss out Duo’s meaning — there was always a deeper meaning with him — and in the end, I had to ask.

“What’s the big picture for you?”

We were eating market-bought and oven-baked pizzas.  I assumed that this was not what most high school graduates did after they received their diploma and shook the principal’s hand, but I didn’t bother to consult Google.  If Duo wanted an evening at home with store-bought food, then that was all right by me.

He looked up and I saw that strange, thoughtful look again.  He said, “I’m going to double major in science and business.”

“But you don’t enjoy either.”

“You’re right,” he allowed.

I was confused.  “What’s become of Egyptology?”

He bit his lip and took a deep breath.  “My mom’s dead.  I can dig up a thousand tombs, read a million inscriptions, but I’m never gonna find her.  Because she’s not there.  And the messages that she did leave behind for me, I’ve already found.”

“Duo.  There’ll be other discoveries…”

He nodded.  “You bet there will.  So that’s why I’m going to pick up where my dad left off.  I’m gonna help give the professors and grad students the microscopes and ground-penetrating radar that they need to find them.”

I stared at him.

“I know that’s not what you were expecting.”

“An understatement.”

“But that doesn’t mean I won’t be dragging you to dig sites in Godforsaken places every vacation we get.”

I huffed a laugh.  “We, is it?

“You don’t have to work for the company — for me,” he said.  “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.  I don’t wanna be your boss.”

“As well, but—”  Where did that leave us?  I was back to wondering what I was going to do with myself.

He stood and offered me his hand.  “C’mon.”

He led me to the music room.  I braced myself for the mess we hadn’t faced yet, but when Duo pushed the door open, it appeared just as we’d left it.  While I’d been at school and he’d been home this past week—this must have happened then.

“The piano needs to be tuned again,” he told me.  “Some strings replaced, too, maybe, but…”  He ushered me to the padded bench and we sat down facing each other.  “I wanted to tell you this here.”

“Tell me what?”

“I, uh, sent copies of your playing — the digital recordings — to a piano tutor.  And I gave him your number.  Told him to call you next Sunday.”

I was taking the GED exam on Saturday.  “Duo—”

“You can tell him to go to hell,” he cut in, “but if you’re still interested in music school, he’s your best bet.”

I shook my head.  “He may not call at all.”

Duo snorted.  “He already has.  Called me.  Pretty much daily.  Asking to met with you.”  He scooted forward, his hands framing my face.  “You really are incredible.  I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

I didn’t give rocks.  “You’re the only one who matters.”

He smiled and it was so pure and true that I realized that the barrier I’d sensed between us was gone.  I placed my hands on his knees.  “Duo, the big picture you spoke of—it doesn’t have to be this way.  The company—you don’t…”

He waited for me to sort out what I was trying to say.

“You are bloody brilliant.  You’ll discover—the discoveries you’ll make—”

He focused on me, listened to me, as I fumbled.

“I can’t—I can’t follow my dream and watch you give up yours.”

He nodded, his hands resting on top of mine.  “Okay, yeah.  But let’s think about this.  If I take off for dig sites, I’ll be away for months at a time—”

“I’d come with you.”

“Not to guard me or the dig site,” Duo retorted, a warning in his tone.  “I’m not letting us go back to that.”

I blinked, realizing what he was saying.  So easily, we could end up right where we’d started: a larny and a merc.

“Finding that message from my mom in Laos and in the caves on Sakhalin,” he paused to draw a deep breath and nod, “that was… I needed that.  I needed to do that—find that.  But it was three and a half years ago, at a dig site in Egypt, where I made the best discovery.  I’m never gonna top that.  I’m done.”

Duo lifted one hand and pressed his palm against the center of my chest, somehow knowing exactly where the clay pendant lay beneath my shirt.  “You’re a necessary part of the big picture for me, Tro.”

His other hand reached out to gently brush away the tears trembling on my lashes before they could fall.

“I’m not giving up anything,” he promised.

I sniffled, sucked in a breath, and remembered a time when I’d been determined to stand by Duo as his equal in knowledge and capability.  “Suppose I want to study Egyptology,” I challenged, “with you.”

He tilted his head to the side in question and I told him my dream, my goal of being a self-made man.

“Trowa,” he breathed when I’d finished, “you already are.”

I shook my head.  “Even with this fokken GED exam, even if I pass, it won’t make us equals.”  I’d sussed out that much.  Duo’s diploma from his larny school was head and shoulders above the humble certificate I was studying for.

Duo sat back on a sigh.  “But that’s just it, Tro.  My speech today—I was trying to say that it’s impossible for me to be my mom’s equal or my dad’s, because I’m me.  You are you.  And that’s a hell of a lot more important than being anyone’s equal.  I don’t want you to imitate me.  I want you to do what you want.”

I pointed out, “But you’re going to take over the company.”

He looked down at his hands where they rested on the bench that we were straddling.  “I __might.__   Or I might find out that I’m not cut out for it.  I just… I wanna try it.  See where this goes.”  He met my gaze with a self-depreciating smile.  “If I’m wrong and it turns out that digging around in the sand in the middle of a desert is the only career that makes me happy, you’ll get to say ‘I told you so.’”

“And I’ll get to come with you.”  I told him, “You’re in my big picture as well, Duo.”

He leaned forward as my hands reached for him, cupped his jaw and urged him closer until we were kissing with a confidence and purpose that felt—I shivered—it felt like that future we’d discussed had already been made real: he was mine; I was his.  We were indivisible, united against all else.

When I stood up from the bench, he gripped my hands tighter.  I braced; he pulled himself to his feet.  I led him to our room, to our bed.

“Let me,” I murmured when he moved to unbutton his dress shirt.  His fingers moved through my hair, gently shoveling my bangs aside and I felt myself smile.  Only Duo would liken uncovering my full expression to excavating for something priceless.  He didn’t even have to say the words: I could see the thrill of discovery in the glow of his smile.

I suspected it was mirrored in my own expression as I sifted through each layer of clothing to reach his skin, to bare mine, to bring us together like the artisan who had inscribed a life’s story upon a stone wall and the scholar who was able to read it, erasing the centuries between both events, touching mind-to-mind.  The purest connection humanity was capable of.

“Trowa,” he breathed as I leaned over him on the mattress, pressing kisses to his lips, neck, chest, fingertips.

“Duo?” I answered, inquired, invited.

He shook his head.  “Just that.”

I smiled, realizing that his thoughts were not all that different from mine: he was reaching out to me and I was reaching back to him; we were finding each other despite whatever future uncertainties shimmered between us.

He shifted toward me and I quickly gripped his hip, ran my hand down to the fresh scar on his thigh.  “Shh,” I exhaled against his temple.  “I’ll take care of everything.  Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

His arms looped over my shoulders.  His short nails trailed along the edges of my scars, somehow finding sensitive skin and sending tingles of sensation down my spine.  I braced myself up beside him, rubbing his neck with my splayed hand as our mouths moved together.

“No rush?” I teased him.  My own arousal was starting to ache and I was surprised that he wasn’t being more demanding.

He grinned.  “I’m trying really hard to be patient.”

“Hm,” I observed, trailing my fingertips down his chest and over his belly to pluck gently at his flushed length.  “Really quite hard,” I agreed.

He laughed and his hips twitched.

I placed a hand on his thigh.  “No, just tell me, Duo.  Don’t risk a muscle cramp.”

He blew out a breath and I felt the muscles beneath my palm relax.  “OK.  But it’s gonna take a little getting used to.”  In response to my inquisitive look, he added, “The full service treatment.”

I rubbed the heel of my hand along the underside of his cock, trapping him against his belly.  His head fell back and his eyes slid shut.  He exhaled through his teeth.

I told him, “No worries, bokkie.  When you’re done healing, you’ll have your way with me again.”

“I’d rather you had yours with me.”  He opened his eyes.  Or gazes met and clung.  “I want you.  Like that.  Like I was in you.”  His jaw clenched briefly.  “I get that I gotta wait ‘cause of my leg, but—”

“Bugger and fuck, Duo,” I wheezed when I managed to replace the breath that had been knocked out of me.  “You are weeks—”  Perhaps _months._   “—away from anything remotely—”  I paused.  Deep breath.  “And you’re telling me this now?”

“Still gotta work on my timing, huh?”

“Ja.”

“Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.”  I leaned closer, nuzzling aside his hair to caress his ear with my lips as I spoke my revenge, “I still think about having you deep inside me.”

His breathing hitched.  Beneath my hand, his cock twitched.  I kept rubbing him slow and steady.

“Your touch was so good.  Inside.  It was like you were stroking my whole body.”

He moaned softly.  His hands slid under my arms and down my back until he was cupping my hips, so close to my arse.  “The way you moved with me,” he murmured, caught up in the memory, “was so fucking sexy, Trowa.”

“I never wanted you to stop.”

He panted.  “I had to have you in my mouth.  Feel you moving like that in me.  Taste you.”

“Fuck, Duo.”

“Please,” he begged.  “Get the lube for me.  Lemme—lemme do that for you, baby.”

Ah, fuck fuck fuck.  I wanted that, but first I had to make him promise not to tense his hips or legs.

“I promise,” he breathed desperately.

I reached over for the drawer in the bureau and he used his crutch-strengthened arms to squiggle up in bed.  He braced himself in a slouch against the headboard with both pillows behind him.  “C’mere,” he urged, taking the lubricant from my grasp.

Anticipation was burning me from within as I straddled his waist and he slicked his fingers.  He recapped and tossed the bottle aside, reached for my length with one hand just as his slick fingers swirled firmly over my entrance.

“Ah, bugger all!” I complained, caught between the urge to thrust into his grip and the instinct to rotate my hips in counterpoint to the massage.  His hand twisted over my cock; his thumb massaged my excitement into the head; one finger slid inside me.  A whine eked out through my nose.

“Jesus, Trowa, baby.  You are—so fucking hot.”

I couldn’t respond.  Just then, his fingertip found what had nearly driven me mad before.

“Nngh!” I informed him through gritted teeth as he circled that spot.  I was leaking, thrusting into his grasp, rolling my hips with the rhythm of his hand.  “D-Duo!”

“C’mere, please.  Lemme—lemme…”

I braced myself on the headboard and let Duo guide me toward his mouth.  I watched, lust searing through me, as his lips closed around the head.  Thrust helplessly as his tongue swept over the slit.  Only his fist around the shaft kept me from fucking his mouth with abandon because, bugger and fuck and fuck all, he was still petting me deep inside and fiery sparks rippled over my body, on the inside of my skin, again and again and again.

“Duo—Duo—hng—Duo!” I chanted.

He hummed in agreement.  I reached down to push his bangs aside and he looked up at me through his brows with eyes so dark with desire and heat and—

He slid his hand down; more of my cock disappeared into his hot mouth.  His tongue swirled and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked and I felt his other hand pull back before sliding into me with two fingers.  It burned, but I could not have cared less — I was trapped by the heat of his mouth, the perfect suction on my cock, and the star bursts of pleasure from every backward twitch of my hips against his fingers.

“Duo—I’ll—I’m—”

Despite the warning, he didn’t let me go.

I came with blinding force in his mouth, clenching around his fingers, and he moaned with me.  I opened my eyes as the tidal wave withdrew and met his heavy-lidded gaze.  For a solid minute, I stayed right where I was, grasping the headboard in one hand and pushing his bangs aside with the other.  I taught myself how to breathe again.

When I felt steady enough to move without collapsing in a heap, I shifted my hips back.  My softened length emerged from his lush mouth and his fingers withdrew from inside me.  My gaze stayed locked on his as I moved back on the bed, crouching over him, and reached for his arousal.

He whimpered as I collected the weight of him into my grasp, lifting his length off of his belly and leaning in to lick up the puddle of fluid he’d leaked in his excitement.  Then I shook my bangs aside and drew him into my mouth.

He reached for my hair with the hand that had guided my cock, tangled his fingers in the long strands, and gently tugged them aside.  I descended as far as I could go, then met his gaze as I sucked my way back up.  He wailed and I grabbed his hips to keep him from forgetting his promise.

“Faster, Tro, faster,” he pleaded and I kept my word.  I did as he asked, banding one forearm across his thighs and working him quickly with my fist, sucking and tonguing him in my mouth.

“Ah, damn it, I’m—”  He didn’t have time to finish his sentence, but that was fine.  It was befokken coaster.  I shuddered with heat as my mouth flooded with his taste.

For a minute, we simply existed.  I laid my head on his unmarred thigh and licked the head of his softened cock with teasing sweeps of my tongue.  Duo’s hand clenched in my hair, then loosened and massaged my scalp, only to clench again and tug lightly.  I groaned, liking the sensation just a little too much for my body to stand.

It was just as well that I was lying down, then.

“I should say something witty or romantic,” Duo panted softly, “but I got nothing.  That was—wow.”

I grinned, tilting my chin to look up at him over his exhausted length.  “Ja.  As well.”  My lips twitched when I realized, “Looks like I got the full service treatment.”

“Heh.  You’re not gonna be hearing any complaints from me.”

“Good.  Don’t wys with the oke who’s keen to press you senseless.”

Duo hummed and started petting my hair.  “You are befokken lekker.”

I licked his softened cock again and he shivered.  “As well.”

As badly as I wanted to have a doss right where I was, I forced myself to reach for the bureau and the clean-up supplies.  Then I crashed beside Duo.  I had every intention of getting up and taking a shower, but the last thing I remembered was the feel of a blanket sliding over my skin.

Duo and I slept through the rest of the afternoon and evening.  There were no nightmares.  There were no tears.

But we both woke after midnight, starving for the supper we’d missed.

Thanks to the miracle of frozen dinners, Duo and I were able to sprawl on the sofa with mostly fully bellies and an assortment of snack items.  We clicked through the TV channels and Duo snorted at the doff infomercials.  Then, as I’d expected, he turned the telly off and turned on the radio.  Classical music slid, marched, twirled, and whispered into the room with us.

When Chopin’s Nocturne, opus nine, number two came on, tears trickled down his cheeks in silence.  I wrapped an arm around him and he held onto me.

I told him, “I’m sorry they couldn’t be there at the ceremony today.”

He nodded.

“They’d be so proud of you, bokkie.”  Then I daringly added, “I’m proud of you.”

He sobbed.  His fingers tightened in the fabric of my T-shirt.  I pulled him closer.  We listened to the rest of the solo piano in silence.

When the final notes were fading and the radio announcer’s soft voice was droning on about whomever the pianist had been, Duo asked, “Will you—someday—will you play it for me?  Your way, though.”

“Ja mos ja,” I assured him.

The next day, it was Duo’s turn to assure me.  “You’re gonna pass your test, Tro.”

I buried my fingers in my hair and scratched at my own scalp in frustration.  “How do I fokken study everything?”

“One thing at a time.  Like this—”

We spent the next few days going through my coursework from start to finish.  Duo had purchased the textbooks for me, so I was free to mark them up as much as I liked.  Whenever I hit a subject that I couldn’t sort out, Duo would dig out his old school work to give me another look.  Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes the only way I could wrap my mind around it was while Duo and I were working out in the building gym or slow dancing in our socks in the kitchen.  Sometimes nothing worked and my confusion only deepened.

“We’ll come back to it later,” Duo said when that happened, and we moved on to a completely different subject, and another, and another, and—

By Wednesday afternoon, my brain was about to explode and I yelled at him, at no one, at myself: “I’ve never even taken a fokken exam before, bugger all!”

Duo blinked.  Then he determinedly grabbed my shoulders.  “OK.  I’ll show you what to do.”

He cobbled together a mock-up of what he called a standardized, multiple-choice test.  Faced with my enemy, I felt a measure of calm descend.  I familiarized myself with the question format and the answer sheet.  Dissecting and analyzing it like I would an opponent.

“When it comes to tests,” Duo told me, “it’s not so much about what you know.  It’s about time management.  Don’t waste time trying to figure one thing out.  Move on.  Finish the problems that are easier.  That’s how you rack up points for your score.  It won’t matter if you can’t answer the hard questions because they’re all worth one stupid point each or whatever.  It _will_ matter if you can’t answer enough of them in the time you’ve got.”

This was a startling approach.  Taking an exam wasn’t like guarding a compound where the goal was to suss out the threats after assigning values to all of them, and then centering your focus on those with either the highest likelihood of occurring or the greatest chance of success.  Exams were nothing like that.

My brain struggled to make the switch over from merc-logic to—

What?

Whatever this was.  I asked Duo for a comparison I could visualize.

“Fishing with a net?  Panning for gold?”  At my blank look, he paused, stuck his jaw out, and when he blew out a breath, it ruffled his bangs.  “OK.  It’s natural selection—nature—at work.  Imagine a herd of springbok.  You’re gonna loose some to predators and poaching but, at the end of the day, it’s how many you’ve got still standing that count.  Not which ones you’re missing.”

“Pawns,” I summed up.

“Huh?”

“Pawns on a chess board,” I elaborated.  “Forget the other pieces.”

“Right!  Or like checkers,” he further simplified.  “They’re interchangeable, but you need as many as you can get in order to win.”

I kissed him.  “I think I’ve got it now.”  I kissed him a second time, slower.  Deeper.

He groaned.  “Oh, no.  You’re not starting anything until we’ve drilled this.”

“Drilled?” I parroted, wondering—blatantly hoping—that this was one of the colorful local idioms for a press.

Duo grinned.  “This is where swim team practice is gonna come in real handy.  Lucky you.”

I certainly hoped so, but as it turned out, I wasn’t allowed to appreciate Duo’s swim-toned physique.  Instead, we spent blocks of twenty minutes on one thing or another, Duo quizzing me or giving me a fresh copy of his past homework to take on.  The concept of responding within a time limit had not been part of the school curriculum.  I already knew how to operate under pressure — in situations of life and death — but now I had to train myself how to shift that focus to a clock that was ticking down to naught.

I hadn’t drunk this much coffee since I’d been with the troupe.   

Friday morning, Duo suggested I take a break.  “Let things settle, babe.”

But I couldn’t abide the thought of wasting time with the exam on the morrow, so we leaned our shoulders against each other’s on the sofa and flipped through my science textbook.  Duo would skim the page with me and ask questions he thought might come up on the test.

At ten o’clock, he closed the book.

“What—?”

“I’m taking you to bed.”

“It’s early yet,” I protested.

“And,” he continued, “I’m going to exhaust you so that you can get a good night’s sleep.”

My mouth went dry as heat surged from the base of my spine to my cock.  “Is it?” I rasped.

He nodded.  Licked his lips.  His eyes sparkled.  “Follow me.”

I did.

He laid me down on my belly near the edge of the mattress so that he could sit with his foot on the floor, keeping his still-healing leg stable, and then he massaged my shoulders and back.  He asked me about music.  The compositions I liked to listen to and why.  The ones I loved to play.  Then his slick fingers pressed inside me and conversation was done.  He petted and stroked and circled as my hips rolled against his hand and— _ah, god._  It felt so good.  I was in bliss.  Time stood still until my ballas started to ache and my cock—oh, god—I needed—

“Sit up, against me,” he breathed and then swore and praised me—“Fuck, baby, you’re so sexy.  Hmm.  Just like that.”—as I moved to comply.  I gasped as his fingers pressed into my flesh and—

“Fuck… all!” I moaned.

His other hand skimmed over my hip, slid over my thigh.  I groaned as he gently rolled my ballas before collecting my hard length and then it was all on me; I thrust into his grip and then back against his fingers, slow and hard at first, leaning back against him.  His kissed my neck, dragged his teeth over my beard stubble, sucked on my earlobe, whispered, “Trowa, you’re so incredible.  Yes, please.  Please.  Show me how good it feels.”

His hand performed that mind-blanking twist over the head of my cock and my hips twitched hard.  “You like that?  Hmm, I do, too.  I like the way you feel, so hot and hard—”  He massaged the head and foreskin with another roll of his hand.

“Ah!” I approved, my movements speeding up.

“I want you to come so hard for me,” Duo pleaded hotly, breathless and needy, and I nodded.  I wanted to come for him, too.  Wanted to give that to him.  I rolled my mouth toward his for a brief kiss and then he was sucking hard on the side of my neck, marking me.

My mind shattered.  My hips slammed my cock into his fisted hand again and again as his fingers fucked into me and I came.

I came with blinding, white light and heat and shimmering waves of sensation.  On and on.

Until it released me and I slumped against his shoulder.  He guided me down to the bed.  My head hit a pillow.  A warm, wet cloth caressed my arse and cock.  Warm lips on my cheek—

I woke to a hand caressing my arm and kisses on my shoulder.  “Time to get up, babe,” Duo told me.

“Hm?”  I glanced at the clock.

“Take a shower.  I’ll make coffee.”

It wasn’t until my hands were deep in shampoo suds and my nails scratching at my scalp that I realized Duo hadn’t come last night.  Well.  Regardless of how today’s fokken test went, he would tonight because I was going to pay him back for that.

I drove to the school with Duo.  He reached for my hand, squeezed it.  “You’re gonna kick ass, babe.”

His confidence coaxed a smile out of me and I stopped hesitating to open the car door.  In front of the bonnet, I passed Duo the keys and dared, “A kiss for luck?”

He complied immediately, tilting his face up and sliding a hand along the back of my neck and into my hair.  He kissed me until I pulled back.

“I’ll save the rest for later,” he promised with a smile.

I returned it.

Several of my classmates had witnessed this and there was just enough time before the examiner entered the room for comments to be made about it.  Marie May was furious that she’d missed seeing it for herself.  Odin, however, was clearly wishing he hadn’t.

“What was the score on last night’s game?” I asked him and the relief on his face was befokken hilarious.

The test was fully as hideous as I’d feared.  The endless march of questions against the too-loud ticking of the second hand in the room’s clock, which lorded over us all.  But the advice and the practice Duo had given me last week – his complete devotion to helping me suss out what I’d need to do – had me completing each section on time.

“Once you’ve tried to answer each question, if you have time, go back and look over the ones you couldn’t answer or weren’t sure about.”

I did that, changing very few of my initial answers because, as Duo had also said, “Most of the time, your first guess is the right one.”

Duo was waiting for me in the car park when I stumbled outside hours later.  He was leaning back against the passenger side door, smiling with his thumbs hooked in his denims pockets.  It reminded me of the day I’d gotten my driver’s license; the first day I’d gone to pick him up from school.  I’d leaned against the car.  On display.  Waiting for him to walk over to me.  To take me home with him.  To claim me as his.  His china, his maat, his kerel.  I hadn’t bothered to consider it too closely at the time; he certainly hadn’t been ready for all that.  But now…

He held out a hand and offered himself.  I clutched his fingers tightly.  When I leaned closer, I found myself in his embrace.  He rubbed my back as I lowered my aching head to his shoulder.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said quietly.  I gasped in silence, stung by the sudden surge of emotion those few, simple words called forth.

“Take me home,” I ordered.

He opened the car door and I collapsed into the seat.  Duo cooked a late lunch for me: beef stew from a tin, steamed vegetables from a freezer bag, biscuits from a cardboard tube.  We ate while we watched golf on the telly.  Then I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and we dossed on the sofa.  It was soothing and perfect.

I woke Duo to the feel of my lips on his neck.  His lashes fluttered and he groaned my name.  He wasn’t fully awake and he’d said my name.  It may not have been the first time, but I reveled in the implication: I truly was inseparable from Duo’s life.  His big picture.  I was in his mind — he was aware of someone next to him, touching him, and he believed it was me.

If I had my way, it always would be.

“To bed, bokkie,” I murmured.

“Early yet,” he observed, growing a little more alert.  I watched him stretch.

“Ja,” I agreed, eyeing the slight bulge in his denims.  “Come to bed with me.”

The bulge swelled.  I stood, making no effort to hide the fact that my own denims were becoming uncomfortable.  I held out my hands.  He took them and I pulled him to his feet.

He went a step further and wrapped his arms around my neck, rubbing our hardening lengths against each other, tilting his head, and leaning in for a kiss.  “What’re we gonna do when we get there?” he asked against my lips.  “Build a fort?”

I shook my head, rubbing our lips together.

“Read comic books with flashlights?”

Another caressing shake.

“Jump up and down until we break the bed?”

I smirked.  “Something… similar,” I allowed.

He grinned.  “Sounds fun.  Lead on.”

I did.  I led with kisses and warm hands over his body.  He directed with every sigh and moan.

“Trowa…” he breathed as I slid our bodies together, skin on skin, nuzzling his neck.

“Trowa,” he pleaded as my palm moved up the inside of one spread thigh.

“Trowa!” he gasped as I sucked hard on his chest and my fingers curled around his flushed length.

“Tr-Trowa!” he stuttered breathlessly as my other hand nudged his healthy leg up over my shoulder and I circled his entrance with lubed fingertips.

“Tro-Tro-Tro!” he panted as I sucked his hard cock as deeply as I could into my mouth and slid a single finger into him.

“Ahhh!  Trowa!” he shouted breathlessly as I massaged him deep inside, my own length aching as I reveled in how hot and tight and soft he felt.

“Trowa—baby—I’m—!” he rasped as I pumped his shaft faster and my tongue swirled over the head and I rubbed that spot inside of him and his good leg tensed over my shoulder until—ah, yes, this, hmm.  His hot taste in my mouth.  His fingers clenching in my hair.  His entire body shuddering in the wake.  His soft groan every time I lightly sucked or caressed his softened cock with my tongue.

I wondered if I could make him hard again.  My fingers were still inside of him.  I curled them gently and he moaned my name, “Trowa…!”  His cock swelled.

I pulled back and asked, “Can I have you inside me again?”

His length hardened further.  His hand clenched in my hair.  His fingers clawed over my upper back.  “Oh, God.  Yes.  Whatever you want.”

I wanted him.  I curled my fingers again.  He bit his lip.  His neck arched, pressing the back of his head into the pillow.  I petted his scarred thigh, reminding him not to flex the muscle.  “I want you to lie back,” I told him, leaning forward to place a sucking kiss on the underside of his growing arousal.  “And let me handle everything.”

He nodded, frantic and helpless.  And so trusting.  So very, very trusting.

His trust would undo me every time.

He reached for the lubricant.  “C’mere, baby—oh, fuck, that feels good,” he praised as I continued to massage him.

I was loathe to stop when every motion of my fingers made his cock twitch, so I swiveled around, straddling his chest in what’s known as a sixty-nine.

Duo groaned.  “Jesus.  Trowa.”  His hands rubbed over my arse, between my thighs, along the underside of my ballas.

“No,” I warned him.  “I’m too close.  Just prep me, bokkie.”

He did.  Gently.  He slicked and stretched me.  Eventually, I had to remove my hand from his heat; I fumbled for a condom and dressed his gorgeous cock.  Grabbed the lube.  I pulled away so I could watch him as I applied it, watch his hands fist in the towel he’d been using to dry them.  His lower lip was swollen as if he’d been biting it.  Hard.  His eyes were heavy-lidded.  I swung my leg over his hips and a soft whine vibrated in the back of his throat.

“Duo, love,” I said as I lowered myself over him, taking him in slowly.  Like the first time, it burned.  It overwhelmed me.

“Oh, God.  Trowa.  I can see—”  His throat worked as he watched and felt himself disappear into my body.  “Oh, God.”

He was so deep like this.  I grabbed the second towel and took my time cleaning my hands as my body adjusted and finally accepted him.  Bugger all.  He was so deep and hard and mine.

My hips thrust forward at the thought.  Greedy and aggressive.

His breath burst from his lungs.  His hands grabbed for my thighs.  I dropped the towel and moved his grasp to my hips and around to my arse.  “Pull me in,” I directed, wanting to watch his arms and chest flex as his cock surged inside me—fuck, yes!  “Just—just that, bokkie.”

He did it again and I groaned, rolling my hips as a rhythm coalesced.  I reached back, resting my hands on his thighs.  I’d intended it as a reminder not to tense his leg, but the shift brought his hard cock into direct contact with that sensitive spot inside me and my mind went completely and utterly blank.

“Trowa—baby—your cock is so—!”

It was.  I’d never been this aroused in my life, I was certain, but— “Not yet.  Please,” I panted.  “More of this.  More—hmm—bokkie, it’s so bloody—ah fucking—kwaai—lekker—ah!”

Duo panted, whined, and swore, but he didn’t stop and I couldn’t stop and all I wanted was his cock fucking me deep—deep—deep—deep!

“Sorry, so sorry, baby—I gotta!”

I registered the words after one hand left my arse and wrapped around my length and—“Eish!  Duo!”—and I was burning, searing, blasting open, coming so hard I couldn’t even see, my body rocking and thrusting and totally at the mercy of an instinct that strove to prolong the unbearable heat that was destroying me from within.

Duo’s shocked cry, his hands pulling my hips down flush against his as his belly flexed and he curled up from the mattress, coming in pulses that drew agonizing whimpers from him.

Somehow, I caught him before he fell back.  I eased him down, easing myself off of him in the process and feeling the last twitch from his length as he slid free of me.

“All right?  Duo?” I panted, blinking my eyes against the afterimages of fireworks at the edge of my vision.

“I… uh, I dunno.”

“Your leg?”

“Eh, it’s probably okay.”

“Probably!” I barked.

He gave me a dopey grin.  “I’ll let you know when the fairy dust fades.”

I slumped to the mattress beside him, draped over him.  I groped for a towel to help clean off his belly and chest and—fokken hell—even his neck and chin.  He licked at the corner of his mouth and grinned.  “That’s gotta be a record.”

Bloody ever fokken fuck all.

I dealt with the condom.  Grabbed the sanitary wipes.  Cleaned us both up.

“Hm, thanks, baby,” he purred.

“All part of the full service treatment,” I quipped tiredly.

He groaned.  “I cannot wait for you to do that to me,” he continued, further destroying what little coherence I was capable of.  The image of Duo mounting my cock and moving with my hands, my fingers flexing into his firm arse—

“Bugger and fuck.  Stop.  I beg you.  I’m stukkend.”

“Uh-oh,” he drawled, sounding drowsy.  “That sounds bad.  Hope it’s not permanent.”

“As well,” I think I managed, and then I was out.

I woke to the feel of a shiver—Duo’s skin was cold and it was dark.  By the time I got him under the covers, I’d woken up enough to need a shower.  And food.  And by then it was six-thirty in the morning.  I heard Duo stumble into the bathroom.  Heard the shower start.  I met him with a cup of hot coffee.

He took it with a smile.  Sipped.  Lowered his forehead to my shoulder and sighed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, rubbing his arms through the sleeves of the jumper he was wearing.  A jumper in June.

“I owe you a gold medal for last night.  Just so you know.”

I laughed.  I kissed his temple.  I fed him breakfast.

My mobile buzzed with an incoming call just as I was contemplating Duo’s exhausted slouch and half-finished plate.

“Who is it?” he asked as I shifted my hips to reach for it.

I recited the number on the display.

Duo smirked.  “Well, at least he waited until—”  He checked his watch.  “—eight forty-five a.m.”

Oh.  The piano tutor.  “What do I say?”

He shrugged.  “Start with ‘Hi, this is Trowa,’ and go from there.  Do you wanna meet him?  I’ll drive you to his studio.  You know my schedule.”  He gave me an encouraging smile.  The phone continued to buzz.  “You’ve got this, babe.”

With his confidence shoring me up, I took the call.  “Aweh?”

“Trowa Barton,” a nasal voice snidely greeted.  “You have wasted enough of my time already and I haven’t even been permitted to meet you yet.”

My brows soared up.  My jaw dropped.  “Is it?” I coughed.

“Not to worry.  I fully blame your overprotective significant other.  Now, you’ll report to my studio ready to play a selection from your repertoire at eleven a.m. sharp or I shall be most displeased.  With __you__  and not Mr. Maxwell.”

Just who did this larny oom think he was?  I sneered back, “Well if I might have your name and the address of this studio, I’ll give it a think.”

“Why, he didn’t even—!”  The man harrumphed.  “And your Maxwell has poor manners besides.  You might look into acquiring a more accommodating creature to amuse you.”

“No, no.”  I quickly corrected him, “This is plenty amusing.  I’m sure it’s purely intentional as well.”

“Yes.  Well.  You may be correct.”  He cleared his throat.  “You may call me Professor G.  Mr. Maxwell has the address.  If you can convince him to give it to you, I will see you at eleven.”

__Click._ _

The dial tone hummed in my ear.  

I lowered the phone and looked at Duo.  He was leaning his chin into his hand, slumped with lazy confidence over the table.  “Sounds like you two are off to an awesome start.”

I coughed out a disbelieving laugh.

He waggled his brows.  “By the way, Professor G is a condescending, pompous asshole.”

I snorted.  “Ja.  Copy that.”

Duo giggled and shrugged.  “He’s earned it, though.  Best music instructor in the New York music scene.”

“Ja well no fine.”

To my unimpressed reaction, Duo added, “Aaaand, he’s used to potential students bowing and scraping before him, bending over backwards to please him, kissing his wrinkled ass.”  

“You are trying to convince me to meet him?” I check.

“Damn right.”  Grinning so widely he had to be giving himself a toothache, Duo relished, “I cannot wait to watch you give him absolute hell.”

I gaped at him.  “You want me to antagonize the man who’s supposed to introduce me to music schools?”

“Fuck yeah!”

I shook my head.

Duo kicked my foot under the table.  “Don’t tell me you’ve never met jerkwads like this guy before.  The kind who only respect you if you make ‘em.”

I had.  “This isn’t a merc contract.”

“I’m pretty sure it shares a lot of the same elements.”

I stared at him for a long moment as he lifted his coffee cup and took a sip.

“You got this, babe,” he repeated.

I asked, “Will you come with?”

“Hell yes.  I would not miss it for the world.”

Duo had been spot on about Professor G.  He was a pushy, obnoxious old man and it seemed to me he used his bowl-cut graying hair and prominent nose to further the impression.

We’d pulled over in front of Professor G’s studio — a brick townhouse in a clearly high grade neighborhood — ten minutes early at Duo’s insistence.  “Trust me.  Keeping people waiting is, like, one of the five unforgivables.”

“The others being?”

“Screwing with their money, food, family, or favorite sports team.”

I’d tested the logic of the statement and decided it was probably accurate.

“But that still leaves the field wide open.”  Duo had clapped a hand on my thigh and opened his door.  “Have fun playing, babe.”

I doubted I’d call it “fun.”  G waved us both into the front room which was apparently also his studio, sat me down at a grand piano not unlike Lady Maxwell’s, and ordered me to play something.

At my incredulous look, he huffed, “Oh, anything!  It doesn’t really matter.  Well?  You’ve already warmed up before driving over here, haven’t you?  Let’s have it.”

I offered _Für Elise._

“Not that one.”

I glanced at him, but didn’t stop playing.

“Mr. Barton, I said—”

“With respect, Professor G,” I answered without interruption to the song.  “You declined a preference.  The least you can do is wait until I’ve finished to make a request.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Duo sitting calmly, smiling fit to break his face.  I let the music do what it pleased with me — “ad libbing” as Duo liked to say.  I built upon the melody until it nearly became too much for the room to contain, then I withdrew to sudden starkness.  A ghost of the tune eked out of the piano, slowly gaining the strength to end as originally written by Beethoven.

When I lifted my hands and turned toward G, I listed the other pieces I was familiar with.  He barked out his request along with a snide, “Don’t butcher it this time.  I want the original version.”

So that was what I played.  Then he slapped a piece of sheet music on the easel in front of me and ordered me to play it straight through.  I read it, my fingers twitching over the keys, then did as he asked.  Having heard this composition before, I was able to anticipate the mood of it.

Then, with a smirk, G placed a handwritten piece in front of me.  “Do what you can with this.”

It was completely unfamiliar, which I supposed was the point.  But it was a wretched song as well with no melody to recommend it and no harmony to speak of.  I didn’t try to improve it.  Instead, I soaked every beat, every note, every bar in its own hideousness.  Thankfully, it was a short piece.  I still felt as if I’d bathed in a horror film about slime monsters, breathed in rubbish klank, and swallowed a serving of kak breddie.

I finished to the sound of G’s laughter.  Delighted befokken laughter.

“Learn these,” he ordered, shoving a packet at me.  “And you will return to see me next week.  Sunday.  At either eleven a.m. or four p.m.  Which will it be?”

I glanced at Duo more out of habit than anything else.  I knew his schedule.  He smiled at me and I chose, “Eleven.”

“Good,” Professor G replied.  “Now get out.”

Duo and I were silent until we reached the car.  As the doors shut, Duo started cackling.  “I knew it!  He likes you!”

“He bloody tolerates me.”

“No, no,” Duo argued.  “Remember what I said about the unforgivables?  Well, he gave you two lesson times to choose from.  Two!  He—likes—you!”

“Bugger and fuck.”

We stopped at the Super Mart and stocked up for the week and then went directly home.

Groceries sorted, Duo flopped down on the sofa.  “Gonna just hang here for a bit and relive your moments of glory with that stuck-up buzzard.  That cool?”

He did look worn out and I knew I wasn’t to blame this time.  I didn’t even ask if he wanted to go down to the building’s gym with me.

“Ja.  Have a jol, bokkie.  I’ll be in the gym for a bit.”

“Copy that,” he told me with a weak salute.

I pressed a kiss to the top of his head, got changed, and headed out.  I tried to complete my usual workout routine, but I kept seeing the image of Duo collapsed on the sofa in a sweatshirt, exhaustion dragging his eyelids down and making him pale.  I gave up after a mere twenty minutes and I was glad I had.

The moment I returned to the living room, it was plain to see that Duo’s condition had gotten progressively more miserable.  He was curled up in a ball in the corner of the sofa, frowning in his sleep.

“Yoh,” I prodded him.  “To bed.”

“Nerg,” he mumble-grunted without opening his eyes.  “Too far.  Here’s good.  I’m fine.  I love you, too...”

When I didn’t reply within the next two seconds, he seemed to nod off.  I fetched the nearest blanket and covered him.  Unsure of what else to do for him, I resolved to reassess his condition after I took a shower.  It was, without a doubt, the briefest shower I’d taken since coming to this country, and when I got out and approached Duo, still dossing on the sofa, he was shivering.  I pressed a palm to his forehead.

“Fever,” I told him.  “Up.  Now.  Into bed.”

“Goddamn it,” he whined.  “Lemme alone.”

“Move.”

I showed no mercy until I’d tucked into bed.

“It’s too big,” he complained.  “Too much space.”

“You want me to get in there with you?” I asked as I started arranging the bedside tabletop.  I angled the lamp toward him and made sure his phone was within range.  He’d need water, medicine, maybe a box of tissues.  The room’s rubbish bin would have to be moved closer—

“Yes,” he informed me.  “But then I’ll be sharing my germs with you and you’ll get sick so… no.”

“Is that your final answer?”

He shivered.

“Do you have a hot water bottle or an electric blanket?”

“Maybe?  Try the bathroom and hall closets.”

“Cupboards,” I corrected him, just to hear him snort out a weak laugh.

Duo was ill for three days.  He was certain it was the flu.  The only reason I didn’t take him to hospital was because he seemed convinced that he’d only get sicker.

“Germs on top of the ones I already have!  It’s a death sentence.”

So delivered cool drinks at regular intervals.  Talked to him.  Played the piano for him.  Heated up food from cans.  The last point left me with a vague feeling of failure.

“What’d Chef Boyardee do to you?” Duo rasped.

I made an effort to stop frowning at the bowl I was delivering.  “You need good, proper bredie.”

He didn’t bother to ask what bredie was.  Untangling an arm from the blankets, he let me maneuver the dish into his grasp.  Our skin didn’t touch.  “Seriously, babe.  Anything from a can is great.”

But I needed to do something for him.  For us.  I missed him more than I could rationally explain.  “I can go out for takeaway—”

“Eh.  Don’t bother on my account.  Even breathing tastes like shit.  The greasy nuances of fried rice will be wasted on me.”

I sighed.  He ate.  Slept.  Woke.  We played Battleship at three o’clock in the morning when he couldn’t get back to sleep.  I’d taken to walking past the open door ever hour or so.  He’d only made a token effort at convincing me to go back to sleep on the sofa.  I supposed that meant he was missing me as well.  I found myself smiling even as I said four words I’d never expected to put together — “You sank my battleship.” — and I realized I was happy to just be doing something as doff as playing a plastic game with him.

On Thursday, he was feeling well enough to strip the bed, get a load of laundry ready to wash, and take a shower.  I was in the middle of remaking the bed when Duo’s phone buzzed on the bedside table.  Hands full of cotton weave, I glanced over and noted the caller.  Rather than answer his phone, which he’d already ordered me to leave be —  “It’s contaminated by my snot and sneeze bits, Tro.  Don’t touch it, move it, poke it with a stick, or even look at it cross-eyed.” — so I waited for it to go to voicemail, then I called back on my phone.

“Trowa!  Hey.  I was just calling Duo…”

“Ja, Hilde.  I saw.  He’s been ill.  The flu, he thinks.”

“Oh, God.”  I smirked as I imagined her rolling her eyes.  “It’s not even the season for it.  He really does have all the luck.”

I chuckled dryly.  “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No.  I was calling because, well, Dorothy and I are going to a funeral this Saturday.”

“A funeral?” I repeated, moving out into the hall so I could better hear the gush of the shower and track Duo’s progress.

“Yeah.  Dorothy’s uncle, Treize Khushrenada, has been missing for forty-five days.  According to his will, I guess, that means he should be considered dead.  It’s a business thing.”

I could hear her shrug over the line.

“So, I was just calling to tell Duo.  And, you know, cancel our rematch.”

Ah, those larney games that Duo and Hilde played on the big screen telly at Hilde’s pozzie.  “Right.  Did you leave him a message?”

“No, I was going to call back later.”

“I’ll let him know about all of it… or just that you’ll try back?”

“All of it.  Tell him everything.  Thanks, Trowa.”

“Take care of your lady, Hilde.”

“Will do.  Good luck with your man.”

I hung up.  Despite the news she’d called to deliver, I was smiling.   _ _My man.__   Ja, Duo was that.

I glanced toward the bathroom door.  The shower was still running.  I went back to the bedroom and finished dressing the bed.  Duo was exhausted after bathing.  He directed me to start the washing machine and then bring a brush and the blow drier.  He laid on the clean, remade bed in a pair of flannel pajama trousers with a towel across his shoulders and back.  I took care of his hair as he dossed.

When he roused for dinner, I told him about Hilde’s call.

“We should send some flowers,” he surprised me by saying.

“Because…?”

“Because Dorothy’s lost her uncle.  That’s why.”

I mused, “Are we going to the funeral as well?”

He chuckled.  “I think not.”

“Ja well no fine.”

“Sexy,” he approved, “but I’m still too germy to kiss ya.”   

That week, I learned the music that Professor G had ordered me to master.  On Sunday, Duo drove me to the man’s studio, but insisted on staying in the car.  His illness had forced him to cancel his usual Wednesday itinerary.  He still hadn’t finished reading through all the reports and nonsense.  Friday and Saturday had been especially grueling for him as he’d attempted to make up for lost time.

Friday morning, I had been surprised when Duo had paused in the parking garage below the offices, turned to me, and pleaded “Do me a huge favor?”

“Anything.”  Absolutely anything.

He’d winced.  “Pretend like you’re meeting Septum for the first time today.”

“What?”

Duo had bitten back a sigh; he’d likely still been paranoid that his illness wasn’t completely finished with him yet.  “We had a talk, he and I, last week about Vientiane.”

“What about it?”

“I should have called him.  He’s head of security.  The company’s, my dad’s, __mine.__   But when I called Noventa and he asked if I was safe, I said it was taken care of.  I’m so sorry, Tro.  I shouldn’t have asked you to take all that on by yourself.”

Given the specifics of the circumstances, I couldn’t see how Septum’s presence would have helped the immediate situation.  “You apologized to him?”

“Well, indirectly.  We both know I called you — my friend — instead of him because I was thinking like an eighteen-year-old kid scared out of his mind.  Whether Septum likes it or not, you did get me through that all in one piece.”

That was debatable, but I hadn’t interrupted him.

“So, I’m gonna let him do his job from now on.”

“Here’s hoping he lets me do mine?”

Duo’s grin had melted my heart.  “Exactly.”

And, wonder of bloody wonders, that was precisely what Septum seemed to be willing to do.  As Duo had asked, I’d forced all thoughts of the man’s past disdain and hostility from my mind.  I’d pretended that Friday had been our first meeting.  It had gone surprisingly well.

My session with Professor G was… less so.  But the man clearly enjoyed antagonizing his students for the first forty-odd minutes of the hour-long lessons.

“How’d it go today?” Duo asked as I flopped into the passenger seat.

“Nobody died.”

“Hurray for that.  But, you know I’m here for you, right?  I mean, I’d totally help you get rid of the body.”

“I’ll keep it in mind for next week.”

“Eleven again?”

“Ja.”

“I’ll bring the garbage bags and a hand saw.”

I snorted.  “Goof.”

Fifteen minutes later, I sat up in my seat, suddenly alert.  “We’re not going home yet?”

“Is that OK?  I’ve got a stop I wanna make.”

I studied his profile: the way his eyes wouldn’t leave the road, the tense set of his mouth, the locked muscles along his jaw.  “I haven’t my sidearm permit yet.”

His smile was wry.  “Pretty sure you won’t need it.”

“’Pretty sure’ doesn’t translate well into Merc Speak.”

“Ninety-nine point nine percent sure.  Basically, unless we encounter a rabid squirrel, we’re in the clear.”

Give that our destination turned out to be a cemetery, I had to agree.  Duo briefly stopped in at the front office for directions and then we were pulling over and walking across the manicured lawn to an impressive granite memorial.

To Treize Khushrenada.

The funeral had been just the day before.  The slight swell of the upturned earth on the other side of the headstone was barely visible in the expertly-replaced patch of lush grass.  I wondered exactly what they’d buried in the coffin… if anything.  Or anyone.

I suppressed a shudder at the memory of that hopeless darkness and the bosbefok toppie who’d ordered it.

“No flowers,” I noted.  I knew Duo had sent them.

“At the, er, viewing.  Friday night.”

Ah.  Right.  So… what the bugger and fuck were we doing here standing before the empty grave of the man who had been responsible for the death of Duo’s mother and brother, who had tortured his father, who had orchestrated and implemented my own torment and certain slow death?  I just had no idea what Duo was scheming.

Before I could suss out how to ask, Duo retrieved a folded up section of a newspaper from his back pocket.  It was from Friday’s Business Section.

He handed it to me with a smile and tapped one headline in particular.  I frowned at the obscure acronyms and the mention of some sort of acquisition.  I only made it five lines into the needlessly dense wording of the article before I lost patience and asked Duo, “What’s this?”

“Maxwell Limited has bought Alliance Systems.”

Alliance Systems.  That was— “In Lagos?”

He nodded.

“The company that the Barton Troupe has graft with?”

He nodded again.

I still had no fokken idea what any of it meant.

Duo drew a deep breath.  “Alliance Systems is researching a lot of new radar and sonar technologies.  X-rays, too.  It’s a good move for Maxwell Limited as we can use a lot of what they’re working on to improve our own products… once we sort out the patents and government property issues, but!”  He smiled.  “We’re gonna need the Bartons to stay on.  Indefinitely.”

Oh, God.  Duo was looking out for my family?  That was what this was?

I—

I swallowed.

He said in a softer tone, “And I’m gonna have to make business trips there once, twice a year.  I don’t suppose you’d come with me?”

“Ja.  I will.  Mos ja.”  Like hell I was ever letting him set foot on a plane without me again.

Duo grinned, rocking back on his heels.  “So… everyone gets a happy ending.  Except for this bastard.  But, hell, this is better than pissing on his tombstone.”

I barked out a laugh.  I put my arm around Duo and pulled him against my side.  “I love you,” I reminded him.

He smiled.  Just for me.  “I love you, too.”

We both marveled that here was the one thing that Khushrenada never could have taken from us, not even if he’d succeeded and we had failed.

As we turned back to head home, the thought of failure followed me.  Lurked behind me all bloody week as I waited for word on my exam score.  Two weeks, they’d said, give or take.  Duo and I both went to the office every day now from eight a.m. to six-thirty p.m.  We were very nearly the first to arrive and the last to leave, outside of Septum and the guards on staff.

By Friday, I was completely shattered.  I crashed on the sofa as Duo ordered a pizza.  He met my gaze as his lips moved and his voice articulated sounds, but I was wholly preoccupied with the slow tugging of his strong fingers through the gradually loosening knot of his necktie.

“Thanks,” he chirped, pressing the disconnect button and setting the handset down with a clatter on our recently acquired coffee table.  He stepped over to me, leaned down, and whispered, “I have something for you.”

“You had better,” I retorted, reaching up to snag the dangling ends of his striped tie.

His nimble fingers dipped into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a white envelope.  My gaze caught on the return address.  My hands froze.

“It came in the mail today.”

As I pulled myself up upright, he sat back on the cushion next to mine, his knee rubbing against the outside of my thigh.  I took the envelope.  Held it.  Stared at it.

Duo’s fingers combed through my hair and kneaded the stiff muscles at the back of my neck.

I said, “What if I failed?”

“Then we try again.”

We.  That one word gave me the strength to tear off the end of the envelope and pull out the sheet of paper within.

I stared at it for a long moment before I realized that I wasn’t even reading the words.  And when I did—

I gasped.  I grinned.  I flicked the letter around so Duo could read it for himself.  He could see that I’d passed and if I wanted an official copy of the certificate, all I had to do was send for it.

“We are so framing that bad boy,” Duo informed me with glee.

I reached for him.  The letter crumpled between us.  The envelope fell to the floor.  I kissed him and he kissed me and I couldn’t believe this was done.  I had a GED.  Oh, God.

“What now?” I panted against his lips, one hand still clutching the letter and the other massaging its way into his hair.  “What happens next?”

He cupped my face in his hands and, eyes sparkling, answered, “Everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The joke "What do you call a duck with fangs?" and the punchline(s) are NOT mine. Back in my Tumblr days, that popped up on my dash and I just thought Y E S.


	29. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme music: “Standing Ovation” by Good Charlotte
> 
> Duo POV
> 
> Warnings: SEXYTIMES
> 
> This is it. THE END. Enjoy. (^_^)

I’d been planning for this day for a long, long, loooong time.  That didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to get out of bed and get on with it but, damn it, we were on a schedule.

I wrapped myself tighter around my lover, murmuring a breath against the scars peeking out from the armhole of his tank top and squirming myself closer to his heat.  Despite the years, I was still crushing harder with every passing day on this South African, former mercenary.

“Hnn,” he groaned sleepily.  “Skort, love.  Keep on with that and we’ll end up in a press.”

My lips stretched into a grin against the swell of his enviable arm muscles.  “Promise?”  I added a lick for emphasis.

The moment he started turning over, I tucked my arms in and rolled right off the bed, taking the bed sheets with me.  Thank God we’d added a couple of rugs to this room.  I dive bombed onto the one on “my” side of the bed, landing with an oomph and a cackle, looking up with a grin just as Trowa’s sleep-mussed bedhead peered over the edge at me.

“Where do you think you’re chucking off to, bokkie?”

“Got a date.”

That earned me an arched brow.  “At—”  He checked his wristwatch.  “—half past seven in the morning?”

“Yup.”

I grinned as he lowered his forehead to the edge of the mattress.  “Nooit.  Arse back in this bed.  We have loads of time yet.”

I wiggled out of the sheets that I’d stolen.  “Well, if you don’t wanna go be awesome with me, then I guess I’ll call my backup fun-times pal.”

“Howard will slam the door in your face after he tells you to bugger off.”

“You’re gonna send me over to Howard’s for bugging?” I teased, playing dense.  “That’s cruel, babe.  Cruel.”

“It’s buggering,” he corrected me, still muttering at the mattress, “and no one other than me had better have the privilege.”

Taking a chance, I shuffled closer on my knees and grabbed his head so I could speak through his silky hair, “Then up ‘n’ at ‘em, gorgeous.  We got names to take and ass to kick.”

With a torso-heaving sigh, he lifted his face, angling for a brief kiss.  “Let’s do this--” he proposed, “--you climb back up here and take my arse instead.”

“Tempting, Trowa.  Trowa Tempting,” I sing-songed, recalling our introductions on a sandy Egyptian evening a decade ago.  “But…”

“Arse, butt, bum… any of those will do, thank you.”

I snorted.  “C’mon.  You’re totally awake.  And this is happening.  You need this.  Trust me.”

He flopped over onto his back.  I stood up and braced my hands on either side of his head, looking upside-down at him.

“Do you trust me?” I asked into those green eyes.

He let out a long breath.  “Can I have coffee first?”

I snorted.  “Can you have coffee.  Jesus.  I’m not out to torture you, y’know.”

“Well that’s good news at least.”

I pushed myself away from the bed and threw open the wardrobe doors, grabbing the first pile of clothes that I’d put together last night.  “Comin’ atcha,” I warned him as I chucked the bundle at the bed.  He caught it against his chest, picking apart the folds of fabric with an adorable nose-wrinkle.

“Duo.”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Is this… spandex?”

“You know it!”  I was currently wiggling into my own set of black duds.  Trowa looked up as I finished tweaking the body suit into place.  He was clearly not complaining about how it looked on me.  I shrugged on my flak vest and scooped up the duffel I’d squirreled away in the back.  I checked my watch.  “Coffee should be done perking.  Just lemme brush my teeth and the bathroom’s all yours.”

When I came back out, duffel bag still in hand because after all the trouble I’d gone to for this like hell was I letting him have any clues about what we were gonna be doing this morning, Trowa blocked my path with an arm braced in the doorway.  He was wearing his set of super spandex and holy fuck was he hot in it.

“Tell me we’re not going out in public like this,” he purred against my minty lips.

I smiled.  Very slowly.  “Are you kidding?  If anyone other than me sees you in this get up, I’ll have to kill them.”

Pressing myself against him, I deliberately rubbed our bodies together, generating enough heat to summon that dopey, drowsy look which I believed was commonly referred to as bedroom eyes… before I ducked under his arm and dashed out of our room on the fourth floor.  “See you downstairs in ten!”

“Or else what?” he growled.

“No coffee for you!  Bwahahaha!”

He made it downstairs with thirty seconds to spare.  Which was good because denying him caffeine on today of all days would have been just plain not nice.  I leaned a hip against the freestanding butcher’s block in the middle of the kitchen and watched him watch me over the rim of his cup.  How did the guy get sexier with every day?  Just… no idea on that one.

“Where’s your ring?” he asked, setting the empty cup aside.

“In a safe place.”

His brow lifted at the juicy hint I’d just given him.  “Are we about to get on with being unsafe?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I confessed with a shrug.  I unzipped the duffel bag with a flourish and tossed a set of knee guards at him.  Gray ones.  Mine were black.

Trowa cocked his head at me as I bent over to slide mine on.  When I reached for the elbow guards, I chastised, “Someone’s about to get left in the dust.”

“You’d leave a man behind.”

“Depends on the man’s behind.”

“Mercenary.”

I chuckled as I twisted the first elbow guard into place.  “I know one who’d make the cut.”

“What else have you got in that bag?”

“You’ll see.”

He sure as hell did when I passed him the holsters and then the handguns and finally the clips of ammo.  He balked.  “Duo.  What--?”

“They’re rubber bullets,” I assured him, “but wear a helmet anyway, would ya?  It’ll make me feel better.”

He took it from my hands.  I grabbed mine from the completely deflated duffel bag and headed for the backdoor with a brisk stride.  I could hear the whisper of his footsteps just behind me.  Down the hall.  Over the threshold.  Across the backyard to the barn door where I paused, put my own helmet on, and gave him the rundown: “Quatre’s latest toy is inside.  It’s got a body-heat targeting laser.  You’ll feel the hit, but it won’t burn.  Six hits and you’re done, so we’re gonna have to take this bad boy down before it takes us out.”

“Who’s going to know if we’ve been hit?”

“Quatre.  Computer uplink.”

“Bugger and fuck.”  He chambered a bullet into his first handgun and I was this close to licking the tips of his bare fingers.  He might not be a merc anymore, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make my brain short circuit just by handling a gun well.  All business now, he murmured, “Right.  I’ll go first.  Distract it.  How many hits will it take to drop the fokken thing?”

“Dunno.”

“What?”

“Prototype,” I explained.  “Hasn’t been through Quality Control yet.”

Trowa smirked, leaned in, and kissed me gently.  “You really do know how to show an oke a jol.”

“I try.”  I grinned.  He shifted away.  Flipped the helmet visor into place.  I grabbed for his shoulder harness.  “Hold up.  Lemme go first; you’re the better shot.”

“Duo, don’t--”

But I already was.  Because, of the two of us, I was by far the fastest.  The door squealed open and I was already rolling across the packed-dirt floor, coming up behind my first chosen cover.  I didn’t pause before I was on my way toward the second and the “zrrrrm!” of a laser hummed in my ears.

Hah!  Missed me.

I sat back against my second cover.  Paused.  Drew a deep breath.  Rolled back to the first cover.

The bipedal robot -- just under two meters tall and designed for the dual purpose of scientific investigation and rescue operations -- spent precious micro-seconds recovering from the trajectory it had expected me to take.  I squeezed off two rounds -- _pop-pop!_ \-- and then I was rolling back to the stack of wooden crates that had served as my second cover before performing a squirming retreat toward the empty oil drums that would serve as Cover Number 3.

I could hear the sound of the machine’s footsteps -- _whirrrt! whirrrt! whirrrt!_  -- as it stalked me.  I was gonna have to take a hit to get out of here unless--

A dark shape darted through the sunbeams across the way.  The robot sidestepped toward the safety of the stack of cinder blocks that I’d used as my second cover, but Trowa got one shot off.  The bullet hit something in the robot’s vulnerable neck joint; I heard the crackle of a spark.

I dashed for my next post, getting a whiff of electrical smoke in the process.

Ducking down, I scrabbled to safety behind the old, riding lawnmower just as another “zrrrrm!” sent the air molecules vibrating.

Missed me _again._   Hot damn, I was on a roll!

The soft noises of the robot’s mechanisms ensured that I knew where the thing was at all times as I wove and dodged, firing at the robot’s casing whenever it started to zero in on Trowa’s position across the way.  Divide and conquer: Trowa and I divide and then we conquer the shit that stands between us.  Hell yeah.

My shots put some dents in the pretty, white, metal housing, but that was about it.  My contribution to this shoot ‘em up, stress-burning merc-off was dangling my ass in its sights so Trowa could take out more vital junctures of wiring.

“I feel like we’re missing something here, babe!” I hollered over another round of sparking and electronic wheezing.

The robot whirled toward me, its metal fingers clanking in anticipation of getting a hold on me.  Wasn’t gonna happen.  But I was gonna take a hit.  Nothin’ for it now.  I grabbed for a knotted loop of rope and kicked the cinder block off of the release lever.  Alley-oop!  I soared up toward the hayloft.  With the sound of the air rushing past my ears and the _pop-pop!_ of Trowa’s attack, I didn’t hear the laser.  Sure as shit felt it, though.  A hot spot right on my lower ribs.  Ouch!

But I rolled across the hay-strewn boards and out of sight before the enemy got a second shot.

“Status!” Trowa barked.

“Rib shot.  Not fatal.”  I clattered over the boards, making no attempt whatsoever to muffle the sound of my footsteps.  “Shit!”

“What?”

“I got it!  We’re missing the theme music, man!”

Trowa snorted.  “Next time, bokkie.  A little help now-now?”

Grasping the railing with my legs, I swung down and fired off two rounds at the enemy, stopping it in its tracks.  Trowa made it over to the four wheeler, which offered minimal coverage, but I figured he was well aware of this.  I pulled myself back up and out of the line of sight before the laser went off again.

“Whadaya say, babe?  Are we all warmed up?”

“Depends.  What’s Phase Two?”

I chuckled.  Soft and low.  Which was pretty much self-explanatory.

The next shot Trowa fired off managed to bust the robot’s camera lens.  I heard the glassy _crack!_ and leaned over to take aim at the audio-receiver holes in the thing’s helmet-like head.  Trowa silently relocated himself away from where the robot had last sensed him.  Sure enough, the laser shot out at the four wheeler, uselessly hitting tire tread.

I shot again as Trowa pulled himself up the wooden slats nailed into the wall and up to the hayloft.

“Hey,” I breathed, “you made it.”

Rolling his way, I let him scoop me up in his arms as I flipped up our face guards for a quick, hard kiss.

“Do the honors?” I asked, nodding to the canvas-covered industrial sink I’d had it lifted up here the day before.  Howard had known better than to ask for specifics.

“Your looker OK with this?” was all he’d wanted to know as I’d pushed things around and finished with set-up.

“He’s gonna love it,” I had assured him.

Trowa confirmed my estimate with a smirk and a twinkle in his visible eye.  “Ready, bokkie.”

“Sweet.  Let’s smash some robot.”  I grabbed the knotted rope and swung myself out over the open barn space, drawing out Quatre’s latest Anime-inspired design.  God, the guy was such a geek.  But what else could I expect from the chief consultant for the Maxwell Labs Robotics Division?

I slammed both feet into the wall opposite.  The barn shook.  The robot wobbled into the open after me.  Trowa tripped the level and dropped the load.

_CRASH!_

_Spitzzzzz spitz zzz-zzt!_

_Whirrrrrrrrle-ff._

_Pssssh._

“We’ve got smoke!” I declared.

“Victory,” he summarized.

“Hah!”  I scrambled down the rope.  Trowa was already there to greet me.  We didn’t bother with the mess.  Quatre’s latest not-so-wonderful wonder wasn’t in danger of burning the place to the ground, so we hauled ass back to the house.  Burst through the door with our lips already damp from open-mouthed kisses.  From the first floor lounge, I could hear the beep of the answering machine and Quatre’s irate voice:

“Duo!  Trowa!  What in the world have you done to Sandrock!  I said you could test him out, not obliterate him!!  Duo!  DUO!  You pick up this phone right now or so help me--!”

Whatever he needed help with would have to wait.  According to today’s itinerary, it was Shower Time.

We didn’t quite make it that far.  I raced down the fourth floor hall, panting from my sprint up the stairs.  Opening the bedroom door slowed me down just enough for Trowa to loop an arm around my waist.  The next thing I knew, I was on the bed and both our helmets, elbow and knee guards, flak jackets, body suits, socks, and boots were very much elsewhere.

Trowa could be damn fast when he was highly motivated.  I gasped at the feel of his mouth on my neck, all thoughts of schedules flying out of my head.  One strong arm slid under my thigh, angling my knee up and--God yes!--he was flush against me.  Hot, bare skin.  Sweaty.  Dusty.  Perfect.

“Fuck me,” I breathed only to have my breath stolen as he licked and then scraped his teeth over my nipple.

“Like this?” he checked.

“However you want.”

Which ended up with him straddling my long-healed leg and my other leg draped over his shoulder, lying on my side as his slick, bare length pressed into me.  Oh, God.  It was so damn deep like this.  I panted against the hand cupping my cheek, licking at the space between his long fingers, nipping at his fingertips.  Opening my eyes, I met his gaze with a sidelong look and I arched my spine, pulling him in even deeper.

“Ah!  Bokkie--!”  His teeth flashed as he bit off his shout, struggling for control.

I wasn’t in the mood to wait.  I rolled my hips into him, our pelvises grinding together and Jesus holy hell he felt so fucking good inside me just right there so perfect fuck fuck fuck!

I was peripherally aware of my leg being lowered to the bed, of Trowa’s hands on my hips as he tugged me closer.  Then I was spread out on my belly as he plunged into me--then pulled up onto my knees and I was biting the pillow while he thrust-thrust-thrust!  Long arms wrapped around my torso and pulled me back against his chest and I was riding him, back-to-chest, as he bit my shoulder, flicked my nipples, and breathed hotly in my ear, “I want you in me.”

His fingers clamped around the base of my aching cock as he came -- fucking and panting and softly grunting my name.  I gripped his arms to hold him steady as I struggled to breathe, to function through the heat of my own lust.  When he moaned, shifting back and slipping out of me, I shivered and released my hold on him gradually, letting him lower himself to the mattress.

Grabbing for the lube, I turned on him.  Watched as he spread his thighs wide and, from just the sight of his wordless demand, there was no stopping for me.  His skin was mine--all mine--and I marked it as such with sucking kisses in between quick licks and sharp nips.  Thank God our next destination wasn’t a beach or a pool because his chest was a treasure map that I would kill to keep to myself.

I massaged him with slick fingers, stretched him, filled him up, and made love to him.  While I liked to feel him fast and hard and wild, he liked it slower, liked to watch me burn for him, liked to feel every nuance of our bodies locking together.  With as hard as I was, it was torture.  A special, beautiful kind of torture.

Leaning in, I offered my mouth, shuddering with heat as his tongue slipped past my lips.  When he pulled back, he buried his face in my neck as I rocked us together.  Licked my pulse point.  What I wouldn’t give to have him mark me, but we’d be going out in public later.  It would have to wait.

I pulled out about halfway slow and smooth, before sliding into him, long and steady, .  Then back again… and deep again.  “Like this?” I asked, trying to ignore the hot tingling in my skin.

“Hnnn,” he approved with an incoherent moan that I recognized: damn, he wasn’t ready to finish yet.  He wanted more… and damned if that didn’t make me even hotter.

Hissing my next breath in through gritted teeth, I sat up.  Smoothed my hands over his chest and down to his hips, held on as I shifted and resisted the urge to look down and watch myself moving in and out of him.

Yeah, that lasted all of thirty seconds, and then I had to look.  Had to see us moving together.  Needed to watch the way my cock filled his body beneath his taut balls.

He groaned my name and fire flashed across my skin, sending my hips jerking forward.

“Ah-hah!”

I forced myself to slow down.

“N-n-no, bokkie.  Again.  More…!”

More, huh?  It wasn’t gonna help me hold out, but I’d do my best to oblige.  I skimmed my fingers along his flushed arousal, rubbed his balls, and then began a careful massage against his perineum… at which point he took the helm.

His legs tightened around my waist.  His back arched.  He rocked against me--fucking himself on me--with what leverage he could manage.  I met his rhythm, matched it.  Drank in the sight of his leaking cock, his hardened nipples, his arched neck, his green eyes half-lidded with lust and dark with need and seeing only me, only this, only us.

Fuck he was beautiful like this.

“So beautiful, Trowa.  So… so… fuck I need you.”

With those words, I encircled his cock and pumped him fast as we fucked-fucked-fucked and when he came, I was obliterated.  The sight of his entire body riding the waves of pleasure, riding against me, tensing and arching and pulling me in deeper.

I think I forgot to breathe.  There was only mind-blanking, heart-bursting heat and him-him-him for what felt like an eternity.

Right.  This was why I let him torture me.  Because holy fuck.  Just… holy actual fuck.

I clued back into reality when trembling fingers slipped through the cooling sweat along my spine.  I was still inside him.  He hadn’t pushed me out yet.  I groaned.

“Baby,” I exhaled.  “Oh, oh, baby.  Can we do that again later?”

His chuckle sounded more like a wheeze.  “You have to ask?”

I couldn’t even manage a shrug.  “Hearing you say ‘yes’ is a huge turn-on.”

“Hmm.”  He nuzzled at my brow.  “Can I turn you on again?”

“Huh,” I not-quite-laughed.  “You want more?”

“Yes.”

Oh, God.  I shivered.  His fingers danced lower, over my tailbone and between my cheeks.  Oh, __God.__   I whimpered, but I didn’t get hard.  Which was a damn shame.  But also maybe for the best.  The schedule and all.   

I forced myself up off of Trowa’s chest.  He never complained about being smothered, and he insisted that I wasn’t too heavy, but still.  “Sorry, babe,” I told him as I shifted my hips back, withdrawing very slowly.  “I’m gonna need to recharge.”

“So it’s on me to misbehave in the shower, yah?”

“If you think you can manage it.”

He could and he did.  He shampooed and washed and teased me until I was hard.  I smirked at his grin of victory before I wheeled him around to face the wall, pulled his hips toward me, slid back inside, then hooked his right leg over my arm and fucked him with steady thrusts, the urgency from earlier no longer riding me.  “You feel so good, baby.  So good and tight and hot and I’m gonna come inside you again.”

“Ah… ah, yah.  Duo, bokkie, fuck.  Come again.  In me.  Duo…”

The sound of his voice--his low pleas--was more than enough to drive me on.  I held him up and close and let my body take what it wanted from him.  Everything.  Except he always found more to give me, more to offer.  An endless fountain.  I loved him so, so much.

I told him so, stuttering against the nape of his neck as he groaned and his nails scraped over the tiles and the hot water beat at our skin, our overheated nerve endings.

“Ah, damn,” I groaned, feeling the burn in my belly.  “Is this good for you?”

He nodded.  “Keep going.  Hng, bokkie.  I need it.”

I gave it.  I gave until his leg tensed and his toes curled and I braced myself for it as he stiffened, and then as his orgasm slowly released him, he slumped against the wall.

“Keep going,” he moaned, letting me surge into him faster and harder and deeper and he groaned my name mindlessly and suddenly I was coming hot-fast-gasping.

Leaning against his scarred back, I panted and kissed and licked and marveled that he was mine.  It never ceased to amaze me that he let me have him.  If I ever wasn’t amazed, then I’m pretty sure that would mean that I no longer deserved him.

“Damn it,” I apologized, “you’re gonna be sore from that.”

I could hear his grin.  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

That was true enough.  For both of us.  “Well, I guess we know who’s gonna get it tonight.”

I felt his back muscles jerk beneath my torso as the image grabbed on and took hold.  

“Bugger and fuck, Duo.”

“Oh, you can count on it.”

We washed up.  We dried my hair.  As always, it was a team effort when we were on a schedule.  Trowa helped me with the hair bands.  This was not a Casual Braid kind of day.  This was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of day, but Trowa was relaxed and smiling instead of freaking out and itching to wrestle someone, so I figured my plans for the morning had worked out all right.

We had sandwiches with Howard at his place and then I tossed Trowa the car keys.  The radio stayed off during the drive to town.  I chatted, told some anecdotes, pestered Trowa to offer up his share, and then I navigated us through London to our destination.

We were early, but that was fine.  Rehearsal and final checks, y’know.  I stood where I was told to and smiled when Trowa looked my way.  It wasn’t until we took our garment bags to the changing room that I realized there was more than just nerves going on here.

“I’m so sorry, Duo.”

“What?”  Were we canceling this shindig?

He hung up his garment bag and then took mine from my hands.  Unzipping it, he sighed, saddened.  “I promised myself I’d never make you wear one these.”

“Babe.  You aren’t making me do anything.”  He didn’t look at me.  Just stared at the sight of my new tuxedo.  “This thing--tonight--I want to be here and I want to wear this for you.”

Trowa swallowed thickly.  His fingers tightened.  “But you don’t have to.  You can wear whatever you like.”

I reached out and covered his hands with mine.  “Trowa, look at me.”

Drawing in a breath, he did.

I told him, “This isn’t uncomfortable for me.  Not at all.  It’s a privilege.”

He blinked, his breath catching.

“May I?” I asked, suddenly realizing that I hadn’t asked.  I’d just assumed he would be OK with whatever I was OK with.  Sometimes I could still be a real--

Trowa’s lips on mine stopped that train of thought.  A soft, knee-weakening press of warm skin-on-skin and then he pulled back.  He let me look into his eyes which were suspiciously misty.  “Yah,” he answered.  Just that.  But, to be honest, words weren’t really necessary.

Once we dressed, ate a couple of power bars apiece, and checked our teeth, it was time for us to part ways.

Trowa gave me another kiss, cradling my face in both of his talented hands, and I wrapped my arms around his waist.  I held him until there was a knock on the door.

“See you soon,” he told me quietly.

“I’ll see you first.”

He left with a smile curving his lips.  I took a deep breath and headed out to the lobby to wait and, eventually, do the meet-and-greet.

Thomas Darlian and Relena were among the first to show up.  Thomas had a couple dozen new gray hairs, but Relena looked good.  Successful.  Clearly, she was kicking ass and taking names at her dad’s law firm.

Wufei and his little girl arrived shortly thereafter, saving me from small talk about lawyer things.  I didn’t have to fake my enthusiasm at meeting the child he had literally gone to war for, and I learned that she was currently playing the violin--

“But I wanna play the cello,” she asserted with a formidable glare at her father.  Holy hell.  How old was she?  Six or seven?  What a spitfire.  I wished Chang luck.  I was pretty sure he was gonna need it.

Hilde was still putting on her lipstick as Dorothy dragged her through the double-doors.  The hug my best friend gave me was surprisingly strengthening and when I straightened up, I found my posture infused with renewed vigor.

I was somewhat surprised that Quatre made an appearance… given what Trowa and I had done to his precious Sandrock just -- I checked my watch -- ten hours ago.  “Does this mean we’re forgiven?” I dared.

“Not at all.  This means I’m already working on the payback.”

Ooh, boy.  This was gonna be fun.  Heh.  But what else could I expect from the guy who basically ran the Maxwell Labs Robotics Division?

Though Trowa hadn’t voiced any objections when I’d told him my idea for starting up a robotics section in the company and recruiting Quatre for it, I’d sensed something was off.  It had taken a visit to Howard before I’d clued in: Trowa had been jealous.  Not necessarily of Quatre specifically, but that there were parts of my life that I would more readily share with someone from a privileged background.

“What the hell am I supposed to do about that?” I’d bitched at Howard.

“What would you want from him if the situation were reversed?”

While I was generally wary of accepting food from Howard, I couldn’t deny that he had the ability to dish out excellent food for thought.

So, a few days later, I’d asked Trowa if he’d like to attend a business reception with me.

Trowa had frozen stiff, no longer using his fork to convey that night’s reheated mac-n-cheese to his mouth.

Watching me carefully, he’d repeated, “A reception?”

“Yeah.  It’s basically a formal business party.  Dinner.  Schmoozing in suits.  That kind of shit.  I, uh, actually already declined.  Technically, I’m still allowed to refuse these things -- while I’m in mourning for my dad and all -- but yeah, it’s an annual thing that Sheikh Raberba Winner throws.  My dad’s always attended, though, so they sent me an invite outta courtesy.  Nobody really expects me to go this year, but I should have told you about it -- asked you -- before I said ‘no.’  I’m sorry.”

I would never forget his reaction: the way he’d seemed to start breathing again or the way he’d reaffirmed his grip on his fork one long finger at a time.  “There’s naught to be sorry for.  Some larny dinner halfway to--it’s not… I’ve no place in that.”

“It is absolutely your place.  Being there right next to me is--I mean, OK, I completely understand if you honestly don’t want to deal with corporate shit or if I haven’t earned it.  I know it’s asking a lot and--”

“Stop.  Why would you say a thing like that?”

“Because I want you to come with me.  Not this year, obviously, because I already sent my regrets, but from next time, yeah.”

“For--what.  For backup?”

“No.  Yes.  Damn it.  Because I’m wearing your ring.  And this is what couples do.  And…”

“I’ll just embarrass you.”

“Not possible, Tro.  After everything we’ve been through together, that would never happen.”

His silence had sliced through my gut like a buzz saw.  Several of them.  On the highest setting.

I’d abandoned my seat on the sofa and crouched on the rug at his feet, ignoring the slight twinge in my nearly-healed thigh.  I’d paid attention to only him, so I’d seen the exact moment the realization had hit: this was important enough for me to beg him for if necessary.

“Please, Trowa.  I want you with me.  I want you to be a part of everything I do.  Including business.  If you’re OK with that.”

“How can I be?  Duo, I’ve no fokken idea how to behave in a room full of toppies.”

“So I’ll give you some pointers, but you’re a smart guy, Tro.  And you’ve got a hell of an instinct for people.  You can do this.  And, if you wanna try, then I definitely want you to be there.”  I’d grinned.  “Hell, you know I’ll give you a blow-by-blow account after the fact if you opt out, but it’s not gonna be very entertaining since I’ll just be missing you like crazy the whole stupid, boring time.”

To Trowa’s continued hesitation, I’d launched a final volley: “I’m heading an international company, so this is my responsibility, but my dad used to take my mom to these things and then, after she died, he started taking me… to help me prepare, yeah, but now I’m in charge and you’re my plus one.”

“I’m your…”  He’d blinked at me as the full weight of what I was saying sank in: I was asking him to attend these functions as my partner, my confidante, my other half, my spouse.

“Just think about it?”

“I don’t need to think about it.  I’ll go.  Mos, yah.”

Yeah.  I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as I recalled how we’d celebrated immediately after.  They say you’ll always remember your first time and I most certainly always would.  That night -- the feel of Trowa’s hands and hips and hardness as he’d opened my body and filled me for the first time -- I would always remember.

The next time I’d brought up the issue of calling Quatre up with that job offer, Trowa had merely kissed me and wished me luck.  I hadn’t really needed the luck, but Tro’s support?  Hell yeah, I’d needed that.

I hadn’t been surprised that no arm-twisting had been required to sign Quatre on.  In fact, right up until last year, the guy had been running the whole show at the lab, but with his father’s failing health, he’d been forced to return home.  It was still good to have him consult… even if the guy was a sneaky little sadist.  It was entirely possible that that was something Trowa actually liked about him.

In any case, it had been ages since Trowa had gotten jealous.  Of course, that might also be because I shamelessly scheduled corporate shit around his plans.  If I wasn’t with Trowa, then I was a call away and he knew it.  Anytime.  Anyplace.  No exceptions.

Yeah, the last few years had been tough, but worth it.  The company was doing well, expanding into new sectors as technology opened up new opportunities.  That was my contribution, mostly.  I didn’t have much influence on daily operations, though I was fully aware that my decisions could and would affect the working conditions of our employees.

Some quarters were better than others, but so long as we weren’t in the red, I figured I must be doing something right.

“Aweh, Duo!”

Speaking of doing something right!  I felt a huge grin at the sight of Bodrick Barton, head of residential security in Lagos.  The man had even put on a suit for the occasion.  Trowa was gonna be slack-jawed with shock.  Good thing my phone was charged and stashed in my pocket, ready for snapping photos!

“Captain, sir!” I greeted, shaking his hand before turning to Bryce and Martins and… hell, the whole troupe was here.  Well, the fellas who had helped raise my Trowa.  I could thank these guys for having Trowa’s back every day for a million years and it still wouldn’t come close to being enough.

“Thank you so much for coming all this way,” I told them.  “He probably won’t admit to it, but it means the world to Trowa to have you guys here for this.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” the Captain insisted.

Bryce hemmed, “Well, maybe for a date with Cathy, I would’ve.”

Martins punched him in the arm.  Right where his old knife wound scar was.  “Shut up about your wife already, man.  This night ain’t about you.”

“Then what the hell am I doing here in a damn suit?”

“Cleaning up.  You ought to try it once before you buy the farm.  Just so we know what to tell the undertaker to expect.”

I snorted.  God, these dudes were a riot.  “No harm in looking handsome while you’re still alive, man.”

“Damn straight.  I’m sharing my beauty with the world.”

“Blinding them, more like.”

I waved an usher over before busted seams and headlocks happened.  Waved them off as they were led to their seats.  Always a pleasure seeing Trowa’s family.  Yupper.

Not ten minutes later, Heero Yuy tried to slip past me, but I forced a moment of eye contact and a formal Japanese bow on him.  The guy still didn’t have much in the way of small talk to share with the world, but he was a dedicated scientist.  The company had asked him to work on several projects over the years, but aside from video conferences, I hadn’t seen him much.  Japan was quite the hop-skip-and-big-ass-jump away.

Professor G was almost fashionably late, the ass.  He even went to the trouble of a disdainful sniff as we shook hands.  Still, the buzzard didn’t fool me.  He was pleased as rum punch to be here.

So was I.

I checked my watch and although the lobby was full-to-bursting with people, I needed a moment.

I took the long way around, going so far as to duck into a corner with my phone lifted to my ear to avoid making eye contact and offering obligatory handshakes to people I'd only met in passing.  I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and let myself feel the thrum of energy in my body.  God, today was huge.  Six years' worth of sweat, stress, and tears.  And if I was this wound up, how the hell was Trowa doing?

I nearly called him, but he'd have his phone off by now.  Getting his head into the zone.  Hell, he was probably calmer than me.

I forced myself to head back to the lobby for one more round of smiling and insisting on how happy I was to be here.  Which was true.  Maybe my laugh was a little sharp and my grin too wide, but these people didn't know me well enough to tell the difference.  So it was fine.

The lights dimmed once… twice… and the chatter simmered down to hushed murmurs as the guests moved into the auditorium.  I found my seat easily and sat down beside Bodrick who was scowling thoughtfully at his program.  I glanced over and saw the short article that had probably caught his attention.

“Ah.  Tro didn’t tell you about all of that, did he?”

The captain shook his head.  “A bit of it.  But the film things and awards, no.  Not a peep.”

I shook my head and sighed.  “Though he fully deserves it, don’t skop him too hard over it, yeah?”

“Yah,” the man agreed on a chuckle.  “A good skopping never taught him much anyways.”

Didn’t I know it!  I’d gotten more through to him with soft words than I ever had with a no-holds-barred session on the wrestling mat.  So, yeah.  Bodrick and I were in agreement on that one.

Ahead of us, the curtains whispered open, revealing a stage.  Seats and stands had been arranged in the classic series of nested half circles.  The percussion section was already set up in the back.  There was movement from the wings as the performers appeared, instruments in hand, and moved to their chairs.  I applauded with the rest of the audience.

“It helps,” Trowa had told me once.  “It helps get you to where you need to go without tensing up.”

When everyone was in place, the first chair violinist rose and played a single long note to which the entire string section joined in, adjusting their tuning.

The violinist sat and the principal flutist stood, played a different note, and the woodwinds joined in, filling the air above our heads with something warm.  Vibrations, according to the scientific instruments Maxwell Labs made.  Spirit, according to the players whose very breath we were experiencing.

And then, the conductor appeared.

I stood, applauding the figure he cut as he moved across the front of the stage in his new tuxedo.  His hair had been slicked aside and tucked behind one ear so I could see both of his green eyes, which unerringly met mine.

“I can’t do this.  In front of all those people,” Trowa had fretted in my arms the night before.  “I can’t.”

“Then don’t.  Do it for me.  Ignore everyone else and do it for me.  Do it because I know you can and I want you to and I’m rooting for you one-hundred-and-nine-million percent.”

I saw him and he saw me.  He smiled as he took a bow.

Turning his back on the fading applause, he stepped up to the podium, looked to the right and received a nod of readiness from the concertmaster in the violin section.  Trowa looked to the left and got another nod from the principle flutist.  He looked out across the full orchestra.  He lifted his arms.

A complete hush fell over the audience as the musicians lifted their instruments.

With a twitch of the conductor’s shoulders, it began.

The world’s first full-length concert of works composed and arranged and conducted by Trowa Barton.

Most music school graduates, even the most talented alumni from Julliard and Berklee, had to schmooze for years for a shot at something like this but, luckily, I’d been saving my pennies for a while.  So when Trowa had asked what I’d like for Christmas this year, I’d told him: this.  This is what I wanted.  My contribution was the money to make it happen.  His gift to me was the music.

The music, which swelled and then softened.  Stopped for a breathless moment.  Marched with pride and slithered with cunning and rolled with joy.  The music, which was incredible and real and filled with Trowa.  I could hear him, his memories and heartache and hopes and laughter and love, in every chord and solo.

I had to grab for my stupid handkerchief and dab at my face before the lights came on for the intermission.  Beside me, I saw Bodrick doing the same.

I didn’t say anything as people stood up and began milling around.  Bodrick sat forward, elbows on his knees, turned his face toward me and said one word, “Dankie.”

I sucked in a shaky breath.  “No, Captain.  Thank _you.”_

As the man grinned at me through his beard, Martins reached around and punched my arm.  Bryce gave my shoulder a pounding on his way to the restroom.  I stayed in my seat until the lights dimmed again.

When the curtains parted once more, a single figure emerged to applause.  It was Trowa and I gasped at what was in his hand.  The lights gleamed off of the silvery flute and I gaped as he bowed to the audience, looked into my eyes, lifted the instrument to his lips, and began to play.

The opening notes of Chopin’s Nocturne Number 9, Opus 2 soared into the theater.

Oh, God.  He hadn’t told me he could--this was--Jesus.  This was an adaptation of the version he played for me on the piano but he hadn’t told me he could do this on the flute.

I shouldn’t be surprised, though.  Trowa was good -- really good -- on the piano, but from the moment he’d picked up a flute, we’d both known he’d found his true calling.  There was nothing he couldn’t play on a flute.  Hell, I’d even dared him to give his best shot at Queen’s __We Will Rock You__  and damned if he hadn’t pulled it off.  Ending on a smirk, even.  Smug, sexy, talented jerk.

But this.  Chopin.  My song.  He really was giving this music to me.  Just me.

I tried not to start crying until he’d taken his bow and left the stage, but I failed.  I could either feel the music and release the tears, or I could resist both.  So, yeah, I cried.  But I was smiling, too.  I was, however, too distracted by the look in his eyes to applaud at the end.  From the soft grin curving his lips, I didn’t think he minded.

He bowed and left the stage, and I was finally able to breathe easily.  Bodrick reached over and gave my forearm a fatherly pat.  The gesture almost made me start crying again.  Damn it.

Thankfully, it was time to applaud the return of the orchestra.  We waited through tuning.  We applauded the return of the conductor, and the hall fell silent again in anticipation of the second half of the concert.

Trowa had put a lot of thought into this.  I knew this because I’d seen him scribbling and fussing with compositions at the piano for months.  Whenever business had allowed me near either the music room in New York or the one in Colchester.  According to the program, the entire second half was a medley comprised of the compositions that Trowa had won awards on interspersed with variations on some of the film scores he’d written for student and independent film productions.

It has been a busy six-and-a-half years, lemme tell ya.

“Duo?” Trowa asked as I caught up with him backstage following an encore.  “Was it--?”

I kissed him.  To hell with the dudes from the cello section and a couple of saxophonists hanging around.  I kissed him and I took my time, too.  “Beautiful,” I said against his lips before another slow kiss.  “Incredible.”  I painted his lips with the tip of my tongue.  “Amazing.”  One more taste and then I concluded, “Perfect.  Thank you.”

His smile.  It was never gonna not make my heart race.

Trowa kept an unapologetic hand on my waist for pretty much the entire reception.  We circulated through the lobby and I mostly smiled and offered moral support while Trowa accepted congratulations from champagne-sipping and hors d’oeurvre-nibbling fans, former classmates, filmmakers, and music professors.  I was tempted to steal G’s glass of champagne and ban him from the bar after I overheard his nasally voice claiming for the fourth time that he’d been the one to discover Trowa Barton.

“Jesus, his voice carries,” I complained sotto voce into Trowa’s ear.

He chuckled.  “Be thankful you’ve never had nightmares about it, bokkie.”

“Oh, hell.”

“It was.  Absolutely.”

Our gazes met and I offered him an apologetic squeeze to the fingers riding my waist.  Yeah, there had been a lot of nights when work and school had pulled us in separate directions.

Remembering all the times my phone had rang late at night, I told him, “I’m glad you called me, though.”

“As well.”

I didn’t say that since he was done with school, we’d be able to spend more time together.  Naw, if tonight was any indication, he was gonna be just as busy as I was in the coming weeks, months, maybe years.  We’d just have to wait and see.

I was good at that: waiting.  When the principal flutist came over to talk flute things with Trowa, I took a moment to glance down at the glass ring on my finger.  I didn’t wear it all that often because I was afraid I’d break it.  I had a plain silver one for everyday use.  But tonight was special.

Very special, as it turned out.

After wrangling Quatre, Wufei, and even Heero into agreeing to coming out to the house for dinner the following evening, I drove Trowa and I home.

Howard wasn’t there -- he was spending the night in London.  He’d gone to the concert separately and would be driving our friends out here tomorrow so he’d opted to stay in the same fancy suite that Trowa and I used when we had to overnight it in the city.  I hadn’t even gotten past the word “jacuzzi hot tub” before he’d been hollering at me to book the room already.

So it was just me and Trowa.  Some snacks from a convenience store.  Or, corner shop, I guess would be the term here.  Anyway, we crashed on the fourth floor rug in front of the fireplace, plunder spread out and Mildred looking on.

Seven years ago, we’d celebrated Christmas right here.  Just like this.  Well, a couple of weeks from now it would be seven years exactly.

Fingertips sifting through the strands of hair at my temple had me smiling Trowa’s way.

“What are you scheming?” he wanted to know.

I shrugged.  “Just thinking about time… you, me, us, this room, Mildred over there perving like a champ--”

“Duo.”

“Yeah?”

Trowa’s thumb feathered over the glass ring I was wearing.  “I’d like--”  He stopped and I stared at his bangs.  The hair gel had long since lost the battle and now his hair was doing its usual thing hiding half his face from the world.  “Tonight was…”

I brushed his bangs aside and he looked up at me.

“I think I can do this.  Music.  I think I can make a living at it.”

“I know you can.  And you will.”  I grinned.

His throat worked as he swallowed.  “This was what I’ve been waiting for.”

“Waiting for what?”

“To be able to stand on my own.  I can do that now.”

My heart squeezed to a stop.  Shit.  What were we talking about here?  Living separately?  Him moving to L.A. or Paris and me staying on with the company and more Skype calls in the middle of the night and--?

Trowa drew a deep breath and gave me a shy smile.  “I can be a husband from now.  Your husband?”

I startled, just as shocked now as when he’d walked across the stage with a flute in hand.  Well, with a lead-in like that, could you blame me?

His long fingers brushed over the ring that he’d bought for me at an airport duty free store years ago.  “Dominic Maxwell.  Duo.  Will you let me give you a gold one?”

He waited while I got my shit together.  I hadn’t forgotten our deal -- this ring and what it meant and what I was supposed to remember to say when we were ready and he asked -- I just… I just needed a couple of seconds to get my lungs to work and my throat to open and my tongue to move.  Plus, it was kinda hard to enunciate clearly while grinning so wide it was actually kind of painful, but I somehow managed it.

“Yes,” I told him, answering his first question.  “And hell yes,” I repeated, answering his second.

He tilted his chin and I leaned in.  We kissed, moving closer together...

Moving closer together.  It had all started ten years ago at a dig site in Egypt and it hadn’t stopped.  No matter what came between us, so long as we kept reaching for each other, it never would.

Trowa and I visited a goldsmith for our rings.  The artist had to make a special mold just for us.  It wasn’t as if you could just walk into a shop and buy a ring with your name spelled out in hieroglyphs.  Especially names like ours.

The ancient Egyptian words for “time” and “eternity” linking us -- “Trowa” and “Duo” -- together on an unending band.  I was proud as hell to wear that every day.

I was proud and happy and just plain thankful to be that.  Every day.  Together.

 

* * *

 

 

The design for their rings:  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who have seen the movie "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" will hopefully recognize "Sandrock." (^_~)
> 
> The ancient Egyptian concepts and symbols for “time” and “eternity” -- http://www.templestudy.com/2008/06/25/time-and-eternity-an-egyptian-dualism/
> 
> Yet another amazing coincidence. I chose Chopin’s Nocturne 9, Opus 2 waaay back in the beginning of this story simply because it seemed like something you could play that would send little boys to sleep. Not because I liked Chopin or the song in particular. And then, as I was writing the epilogue, I thought to check -- just for shits and giggles -- if there was a flute solo version. AND THERE WAS. (Though, to be fair, many piano solos have been adapted for flute, clarinet, and violin to name a few.) Generally, it’s played with piano accompaniment, but Trowa goes it alone in this concert. If you’re interested in hearing it, I recommend this YouTube video: Chopin Nocturne opus 9 no2 Jane Rutter Flute, https://youtu.be/lrmq8PVUSq8


End file.
